It's amazing how people try to rationalize away the phrase "I could care less", much in the same way that Star Wars apologists try to rationalize the use of parsecs when talking about the Kessel Run. Maybe there are black holes to navigate around, and minimizing the distance is the sign of a good pilot, or maybe this, or maybe that... or maybe George Lucas just made a mistake, you know?

So when it comes to people rationalizing away "I could care less" as being some nonchalant way of saying "yeah, I could but I'm not going to bother" I just don't buy it. It's a misquote of the perfectly unambiguous phrase "I couldn't care less". So when I stumbled across a rationalization of that, my mind wandered upon what I think is a pretty damned good analogy of why it doesn't make sense: I could eat more.

Hey, for anyone who still reads this. Rosetta Code's doing awesome, content-wise, and we're starting to implement Semantic MediaWiki. (To what end? Not sure. I've got a couple ideas, but I'm more an opportunist than a front-end planner.) I've also been shooting a bunch of photos and putting them up online--even photos that aren't cosplay, if you can imagine that. (Which you probably can; I doubt many who read this were following me on Flickr back when I went to Anime Weekend Atlanta for the first time in 2007. If you want to read what I'm really thinking, either follow me on Multiply, or see the same stuff over on LiveJournal--but get your adblock armor up; it's a scary place. I'm also on Twitter, if you really care. I'm a minimal participant, really.

If I show up as a fan for you here, I do read your journals; the My Amigos RSS feed is still useful.

Why this collection of links to me at other places? Easy; I know there are still some of you here who never showed up in those other places, and I miss the interactions. I'd post my blogs here, too, but Slashdot has relegated itself to an incredible degree of backwater status. I was lucky to find the "Write in Journal" link. I'm tempted to find some Perl script to have it suck in blog posts via RSS, and post them to Slashdot. (That's how I'm inducting my blog posts into Facebook, too.)

I miss what this place used to be. I miss the people this place used to have. I still see some of them on two or three other social networks, and some of the bonds there are tighter than they ever were here, but there's still a bunch of you missing.

So... after years of rumour and months of hype, Starcraft 2 is finally out. While I'm perfectly happy to play games on the Xbox 360 or PS3, I must admit that on one level, it is actually nice to see a substantial degree of hype surrounding a PC-exclusive game. I can't remember the last time I encountered this for a game whose name didn't include the word "Sims". However, hype always carries a risk of overshadowing the all-important queston of "is it actually any good".

On the basis of my early experiences (around 5-6 hours play), I'm going to cover that question not from the point of view of a hardcore Starcraft fan (largely because I'm not a hardcore Starcraft fan), but rather from the point of view of a generalist gamer looking for entertainment. I'm not particularly interested in the detailed intricacies of the multiplayer balance, but rather in whether the campaign, skirmish and multiplayer modes are likely to prove enjoyable to the average player.

The first thing to note, I suppose, is that the game requires the player to be logged into battle.net to play. This means that you need to have an internet connection present every time you fire up the game, even if you bought a boxed copy and even if you are only interested in the single-player campaign. That said, I did do a quick "yank out the network cable" test after loading up and unlike Assassin's Creed 2 or Command & Conquer 4, the game did not just freeze up. However, a more prolonged test would be needed to determine just what exactly stops working if the network connection is lost. Some minor consolation can perhaps be found in the fact that the login servers seemed to stay functional even on launch day (which is a first) and that purchasers of boxed copies do not need to have the disc in their drives to play.

And the game itself? My first impression is that it's a bit of a mixed bag. The first shock for me on loading up and starting the single-player campaign was how little had changed since 1998. For me, this was a disappointment. The RTS genre has come a long way since then and it was irritating not to see more of a nod towards this progress. In particular, the UI is a clunky and screen-filling mess. In 1998, it wasn't too bad, but in 2010, even running in 1680x1050, it feels a lot like being forced to play the game while peering through a letterbox. The UI layout is essentially identical to the original game's, and again, this seems dated. Unless you're prepared to memorise all of the keyboard shortcuts (which the hardcore will be, but more casual players probably won't), the interface for ordering around units and building structures will feel slow and clunky.

There have been a couple of small (and welcome) tweaks to the UI. Most notably, the unit-pane has been revamped to remove the previously strict limit on the number of units that could be selected at a single time). This is a very positive step, but it would still have been nice to see more work put into creating a more ergonomic and less visually intrusive UI. The gradual evolution of WoW's UI has shown that Blizzard do have some talented people in this field, and I'm not sure why they weren't put to work on this.

The units from Starcraft and Brood Wars all seem to be back, complete with some balance tweaks and changes to the build tree. The line-up is fleshed out by some new additions, which seem to fit in reasonably well, at least to a layman's eyes.

The campaign structure is somewhat changed from the original. Of course, only the Terran campaign is present at the moment, with the Zerg and Protoss campaigns to be added by future expansions. I've not finished it yet, but the Terran campaign does seem to be reasonably large; certainly larger than its equivalent in the original Starcraft. The campaign now feels very similar to that from Dawn of War 2, with the player choosing from missions with different rewards and outcomes. Credits earned during missions can be used to purchase upgrades to the various unit and building types.

Campaign missions are somewhat variable in quality. There's a fair degree of variety in the objectives, with missions including the standard "build a base and destroy the enemy" to escort missions and infiltration assignments. Sometimes the missions work well. However, the pacing of some of the missions, particularly the early ones, often feels a bit off. On the third campaign mission, I had to defend a base from attack for 20 minutes (similar to the third mission in the original Starcraft's campaign). However, on normal difficulty, I had destroyed the bases the enemy was using to produce attackers by around 13 minutes into the mission. Rather than ending the mission, the game forced me to sit twiddling my thumbs until the timer ticked down. Ok, it threw a few underwhelming waves of enemies at me right at the end, but this didn't really alleviate the substantial levels of boredom I'd experienced. There's also a badly paced convoy-escort mission where you can expect to spend a lot of time waiting.

Other missions, however, do work better. The "build a base and destroy everything" missions work pretty well, though they do get samey. The missions that put you in charge of a Ghost are a lot of fun indeed. That saidyou won't really be seeing any mission designs that you haven't seen in any number of other games. The new mercenaries system adds a slight extra twist to the gameplay, but again, nothing stunningly original.

I did have a general issue relating to game-pace. When it was released, the original Starcraft was widely seen as a rusher's paradise. However, expectations in the RTS genre have shifted a lot since then, and faster build and unit production speeds are now the norm. While actual combat in Starcraft 2 feels fluid and well-paced, build and production times feel positively glacial. Research times feel outright sadistic. It's clearly not a case of the game just running too slowly, though, as combat can be outright frantic (usually in a good way).

It's hard to describe the in-game visuals as anything other than disappointing. It could be argued that the blocky, cartoony look is just part of Blizzard's style, and I'd be perfectly happy to accept this if it had been implemented a bit better. However, background and terrain art looks ancient, while the quality of unit visuals is highly variable. Some units, like the Terran SCV, actually look pretty good and have had fairly funky redesigns. Others, however, such as the Terran Firebat, look as though they've been drawn by a 6 year old. They're bad enough when seen in isolation, but when you get a few of them grouped together, their mis-sized graphics blend together leaving an ugly mess in the middle of the screen.

It's a real pity, because it's clear that Starcraft 2 is running on top of some very capable technology. The pre-rendered cutscenes that are a hallmark of Blizzard games are back, though there aren't perhaps quite as many of them as we've come to expect. They're complemented by some reasonably impressive cutscenes using the in-game engine. These are actually on a par with the game-engine cutscenes from many first and third person shooters, which is an impressive feat for an RTS engine. Arguably even more impressive is the vertically-scrolling shooter they've created using the engine, which can be accessed from one of the between-mission screens. This is a fully featured shooter with bullet-hell tendancies which compares favourably to many games from the same genre available via Xbox Live Arcade or the Playstation Network.

The game does an excellent job of building atmosphere between missions; indeed, it's hard to think of any games that do it better. You can explore various locations via a point and click interface, talking to characters, watching news broadcasts and examining various keepsakes and trophies. It's a bit reminiscent of the old Wing Commander games, only better. These sections have a great visual style and even better sound and music. The game's voice-acting is consistently top-notch, while the twangy musical score is reminiscent of some of the stuff we heard during the original Starcraft's cutscenes and perhaps even more reminiscent of Firefly/Serenity. The lyrics to one of the songs on the jukebox had me laughing out loud.

Moving on from the campaign mode, the Skirmish mode is pretty decent, with a good range of difficulty settings to allow even the greenest of RTS players to get some practice in before heading online.

The online play was, much to my surprise, working just fine for me on launch day (perhaps cynically, I tend to expect features like this in major releases to be more or less unusable until at least 48 hours after launch). There are a good range of maps and play-options, and those hardcore players looking to get the Starcraft 2 online scene rolling are unlikely to be disappointing. The matchmaking tool was working a bit erratically in terms of finding players of around my skill-level, but this is probably to be expected so soon after launch, with so many players on brand new accounts with very limited play histories. Hopefully that will iron itself out in time.

The lack of any option to play the campaign in co-op will be disappointing for some players, but on the other hand, it is nice to be able to play a campaign solo without feeling like you're missing out (Red Alert 3, I'm looking at you).

So in conclusion; if you were a huge Starcraft fan, you probably haven't read this anyway, as you've already bought the game and are no doubt playing it right now. If you haven't bought the game and are wondering whether to... well... maybe. There is fun to be had here, with a decent single-player story and bags of atmosphere, I suspect most people who enjoy RTSes will find something to please them. However, this is very much an old-fashioned game, missing many of the innovations and conveniences we've come to take for granted over the last decade. In many ways, games such as Dawn of War and Supreme Commander 2 are far more sophisticated and... yes... better than this. That's not to say that you shouldn't give Starcraft 2 a go. It's just to say that if you only play one RTS every decade or so, this probably isn't the one to pick.

This journal entry is to share (and save) this totally awesome thread:

http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1511824&cid=30777214

In the final follow-up emails involved with fixing my Internet service, I asked for, and was provided with, specific references to usage caps and usage monitoring.

I have to say, with the addition of email and twitter support channels, their customer service has improved by leaps and bounds in the past three years I've been a customer.

So here we are... end of a decade. 10 years ago, I was a fresh-faced young graduate, rather slimmer than I am now and possessing a rather thicker head of hair. We were on the verge of finding out whether or not the Millennium Bug was going to bring about the downfall of civilisation (it didn't), reality television hadn't really been invented properly yet and you could still find people who would admit to liking the Spice Girls in an unironic way.

In gaming terms, Sony's Playstation had obliterated the competition from the Nintendo 64 and most of the gaming world was looking ahead to the release of the Playstation 2. On the PC, the most notable news of 1999 had been the release of the two great fps competitors; Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament. Few suspected at the time that in terms of online play, but would ultimately be comprehensively eclipsed by a funny little Half-Life mod called Counter-Strike, that had been growing steadily in popularity since the summer. Over in the RPG arena, Bioware and Black Isle had revitalised the genre offline, while Everquest ruled the online roost.

So, as another decade ends, I tried to think of the top games of the last decade; the ones that really made an impact, either because they reinvented a genre entirely (or created a new genre), or because they just "did" an existing genre so well that improvement became impossible without significant technological advances. I've tried to rank these in order, but ultimately, all of the games I mention below deserve, in my opinion, to be counted as classics.

10) Deus Ex (PC) - this came in right at the start of the decade and was probably the most "unexpected" of the games listed here. Following the disaster of Daikatana, it would be fair to say that Ion Storm's Deus Ex arrived with what might be termed "anti-hype". There was a widespread expectation that this was just going to turn into another exercise in running around badly drawn swamps firing unmentionable green goop at hordes of identical frogs. Instead, we got a genuinely intelligent first person shooter, which integrated heavy RPG elements. Sure, it wasn't entirely new and unique - the System Shock games had gotten there first - but it brought an unprecedented level of flair and polish to the table. An insipid sequel did its best to diminish Deus Ex's legacy, but now, almost ten years later, it is clear that the original will be remembered long after the sequel is forgotten.

9) Silent Hill 2 (PS2, Xbox, PC) - the survival horror genre has its roots in the 1990s, with Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil, but it is the 2000s which saw the genre rise to its greatest heights, before gradually retreating out of the mainstream under twin assault from a lack of innovation and an influx of action game elements. The early and middle years of the decade saw any number of fine survival horror titles, but it is Silent Hill 2 that must surely be remembered as the best. Considered purely as a game, Silent Hill 2 looks remarkably unimpressive; the controls are awkward, the combat fiddly and the variety of weapons limited. What drives the game, however, are its plot and atmosphere. In this respect, Silent Hill 2 can challenge the best and most intelligent horror/suspense works we've seen from other media. A truly thought provoking game that never feared to go to some difficult places.

8) Kingdom Hearts 2 (PS2) - a game from the later part of the PS2's cycle, which to my mind remains the best entry in the action-RPG genre on any platform. Once you get past the sheer oddness of the concept of mixing Disney characters with the Final Fantasy franchise, this is an amazing game. The battles come the closest we've ever seen in a game to matching the choreography seen in the likes of Advent Children. I'm listing the second game here, rather than the original, because of the control system enhancements and difficulty tweaks that transformed the experience from feeling like a frustrating chore into a genuinely fluid and exciting game.

7) Valkyria Chronicles (PS3) - what looks at first like a Japanese RPG turns out to be an incredibly stylish and original turn based strategy game. A superb combination of intelligent, demanding gameplay with a unique visual and audio style ensures that this is a truly unique game, with no real comparators out there. A sure sign that, contrary to widespread reports, innovation in commercial gaming is alive and well at the end of the decade.

6) Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War (PC) - when I tried to think of the best real-time strategy game of the last decade, this emerged (somewhat to my surprise) as the clear winner for me. In this assessment, I'm including the numerous expansions that fleshed out the game following its release. Technologically speaking, it is some way behind many of the other RTSes released in recent years. Indeed, to look at, it is not much more than a high resolution version of Starcraft. However, it has a balance and pace, as well as (when fully expanded) a variety of factions and units that sets it well ahead of most of the competition.

5) Forza Motorsport 3 (Xbox360) - if there's one thing this title proves, it's that slow and steady evolutionary development can often outperform sweeping innovation in the long run. In concept, at least, the Forza games haven't changed much since the first installment. However, the quality has followed a consistent but steep upward path. The first game, on the original Xbox, was basically a poor man's Gran Turismo, and a consolation prize for those Xbox owners who didn't have a PS2 as well. Forza 2 was a very good game in its own right, bettering Gran Turismo 4 by some margin and setting the forthcoming Gran Turismo 5 a hard act to follow. Forza 3 refines the gameplay and mechanics still further, creating a game so good that it is almost impossible to see how any other driving simulator (including the still-forthcoming Gran Turismo 5) could possibly beat it without the benefit of a major technological advance.

4) Crysis (PC) - even now, more than two years since its launch, Crysis remains the poster child for PC gaming - the game that demands more from its hardware than any current console could hope to offer. Crysis set new standards in visuals and used this technology effectively to develop atmosphere. That it was married to a very good and highly intelligent fps almost feels like a little bonus on the side.

3) Final Fantasy X (PS2) - the Final Fantasy series has had a fairly slow decade; after the dizzy heights of the mid-late 90s, when installments VI through VIII blasted Japanese RPGs onto the mainstream Western gaming consciousness, the 2000s have seen a fairly slow trickle of "proper" Final Fantasy releases, with most of the world only likely to have seen X, XI and XII by the end of the decade. Of these, it is X that stands out as the best. XI was wildly successful by pre-WoW standards, but ultimately proved too hardcore a proposition for the mainstream. XII was a decent game in many ways, but suffered from a few odd design decisions and the fact that its plot was basically lifted wholesale from Star Wars. X therefore stands as arguably the best Japanese RPG of the decade, given that nobody else has really managed to match what Square can do when they're on-form. An excellent plot, superb graphics and music and a well-balanced combat system came together to create one of the best installments in the history of the Final Fantasy franchise. And yes, this is despite the fact that the game contails Wakka.

2) World of Warcraft (PC) - it might be a cliche to say that WoW has become as much a cultural phenomenon as it has a game, but it is also true. Since its launch, WoW has advanced two major achievements; the first was to cut out much of the grinding that made earlier MMOs so inaccessible to the average gamer. The second, which admittedly took longer to achieve, was to balance this successfully with the need to provide challenge for the more hardcore gamers. The result of this is that Azeroth has a higher population than many actual countries, and has sustained this over a number of years, while seeing off any number of challengers (anybody remember Lord of the Rings Online or Age of Conan?). As we reach the end of the decade, there is perhaps a growing feeling that WoW might have "jumped the shark". However, even if the story of the game from this point onwards is one of "managed decline", its place in gaming history is well and truly secure.

1) Baldur's Gate 2 (PC) - so yes, my choice for the "best game of the decade" was actually released way back in 2000. That I can't honestly think of another game that has bettered it since then says a lot about the sheer quality of this game. While technically obsolete even at release, the quality of the static artwork has ensured that the game looks passable even today. The sheer scope of the game, along with its high replay factor, means that it offers hundreds of hours of entertainment. And the writing, which combined a decent, solid fantasy plot with a rapier-like with and occasional doses of surreal humour, remains among the best ever seen in a game (only Planescape: Torment stands out as a rival). BG2's influence has been immense; as well as the legions of imitators (most recently Dragon Age), BG2 was responsible for reigniting mainstream gaming interest in Western RPGs. The original Baldur's Gate had come close to this, but was held back by a rather unforgiving difficulty curve and a lacklustre plot. In correcting these flaws, BG2 managed to become the closest thing we've yet seen to computer role-playing perfection.

I've obviously had to cut a lot of extremely good games out of that list. Fallout 3, Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic all missed out by the skin of their teeth.

I happened across Pixdaus while following someone's friendfeed, and I subscribed to its RSS feed.

It's a fast, fast RSS feed, and it's difficult to keep up with. However, I've been trying...A lot of what I've been seeing in it has been giving me genuine inspiration for settings, encounters, props and even campaigns for D&D. That, along with a blog post I recently read where the DM's roleplaying the giggling of some minor monstors got her players greatly and emotionally engaged in the combat. Roleplaying monster sounds? Why didn't I think of that? That could give me something about the combat side of things that I could enjoy.

It's sparked my interest in DMing again, and I'm slowly assembling a campaign in my mind. The next step is finding players and a suitable environment; GrandLAN, for its rich perpetual presence of players, was normally too noisy or cramped for comfortable play. I'm tempted to do hold it in my basement, where I can use my TV and sound system for still imagery and auditory props, but then I've got to worry about who can make it and when.

I still think that a "regularly scheduled" game is a bad approach. You can either count on a schedule, or you can count on the presence of players. Not both. Also, having variable time between games offers more opportunity to prepare and ensure an enjoyable session. I don't have a need to kill time; Like anybody else, I have precious little of that already. I have a desire to enjoy the game.

In case anyone wants to take a look: http://www.lawrenceperson.com/.

So on Rosetta Code, we use GeSHi for syntax highlighting. The relationship between Rosetta Code, GeSHi, a programming language and the code written in that language is fairly simple. (The exact order of events inside GeSHi might be slightly different; I haven't delved deeply into its core)

Rosetta Code (by way of a MediaWiki parser extension) gives GeSHi a few pointers about how it wants the code formatted, the language the code sample will be in, and, finally, the code sample itself.

GeSHi takes the code example, and loads the language file named after the language in question. Each language file defines a PHP associative array that contains(among a couple other things) simple rules for how GeSHi can apply formatting to the code in a way that will clarify it to the viewer. These rules include lists of known keywords of various classifications, symbols used for normal commenting conventions and optional regex matching rules for each, among other things.

It's a perfectly reasonable, fairly static approach that allows syntax highlighting to cover a broad variety of languages without knowing how to parse that language's actual syntax, and so avoiding having a syntax error break the whole process.

Unfortunately, it requires Rosetta Code to be able to tell GeSHi what language a code sample is written in. It also leads to odd scenarios where a supported language and an unsupported language are so closely related that examples written for the unsupported language can be comfortably highlighted using the the rules for the supported language.

And I have yet to learn of a good way to do syntax highlighting for Forth. (The Forth developers appear to pretty much keep to their own community, and don't seem to do much in the way of outreach, which makes finding a solution relatively difficult, but I digress...)

So what does this have to do with artificial intelligence? Well, in identifying a language without being told what it is, of course!

A few solutions have been discussed. One approach that has been attempted had something to do with Markov Chains. The code is in the GeSHi repos, and I haven't looked at it.

One solution I suggested was to run the code example through all the supported languages (Yes, I know, that's expensive. Not something to be done in real time.), and select the ruleset based on how many rules(X) were matched for a language and how much of the code sample was identified(Y). Using a simple heuristic of (a*X)/(b*Y), you can account for a number of matched rules while hopefully accounting for an overly-greedy regex rule.

How can we take this a step farther? How about formatting languages we don't know about?

Well, many, many languages have rules in common. Common keywords, common code block identifiers, common symbols for comments, common symbols for quotation, etc. This tends to result from their being derived or inspired in some way by another language. For the sake of avoiding pedantry, I'll just say that C, C++, Perl, Python, PHP, Pascal and Java all have a few common ancestors.

One way would be to note the best N language matches, take an intersection of their common rules, and apply that intersection as its own ruleset. This would certainly work for many of the variants of BASIC out there, as well as specialized variants of common languages like C and low-level ISAs.

I haven't regularly posted to my journal here on Slashdot in a couple years. Meanwhile, I've posted over 1000 blog posts elsewhere, and recently started using simulpost tools to post to several different SN sites I'm on. However, there are still folks here who aren't in those places, and, of course, there's the wonderful world of the Firehose and the exhilarating risk that some of my idle musings might hit the front page. (If I'm averaging almost three posts per day, there's bound to be something interesting in there...)

What I'd like is the ability to post to my Slashdot account using my own script. I remember the Early days of Slashdot where some folks were using third-party clients to participate in the commenting system. It'd be nice if it were possible for us to do that again today, but with journals. It'd be nice for me to be able to reconnect with old friends, and it'd definitely be nice to bring some of that hacker and DIY flavor back to Slashdot. With the exception of folks like Alioth, that piece of Slashdot seems to be all but gone.

So after lurking on the site a while, I kicked off my Slashdot account with this post. Just over six years later, I get mod points for the first time today. What's up with that?

Messages used to show at the top of the page above the first article, in a format like: "You have 2 new messages and 1 old message". Now they show up in a box on the right which, even though I know it's there, just doesn't work for me. As a consequence, I'm constantly missing out on replies and others' journal entries. I noticed you can drag the box around, but only in that column. Anybody know how to get the message notification to show up like it used to?

So I threw together a few more feeds. Here's the list of all the ones I've got right now:

Bad English: Usages of the English language that annoy me. Currently aggregates searches for "begs the question" and "could care less". Feel free to suggest more; If I like them, I'll add them.

Facepalms and Headdesks: Aggregates searches for the unconventional emotiwords (I don't know a better term; I don't think onomatopoeia) terms "facepalm" and "headdesk". If you have any more along these lines, let me know...

Meme Happy: Currently aggregates "in im ur", "it's over 9000" and "do a barrel roll". I also added a search for '"ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to do or" -die' ... Need more memes.

Zero Wing: When I tried to come up with memes for "meme happy", I kept thinking of references to Zero Wing. So that got its own feed.

...Comes from the D&D game I'm *not* runing. My character (A wizard/cleric crossclass) had set alarm spells in case he was attacked in the middle of the night. (His party members didn't really care for him at this point.) When his alarm spells triggered, he discovered that nobody had entered his room. Rather, someone was trying to intrude into the building entrance. (He accidentally set the field of view of his "Eyes of Alarm" spell a bit to broad, I guess.)

Not wanting to spend the five minutes to don his leather armor, I simply said "OK, I put on my robe and wizard hat, and head out into the hall."

At this point, one of the other players started laughing uncontrollably. He and I were apparently the only two who were familiar with the Legend of Bloodninja.

Rosetta Code's lists of unimplemented tasks in a given language are now updated daily at 00:00 UTC by a bot on a cron job. As part of its duties, the bot uploads a copy of itself, too. And you can probably guess what language I wrote it in.

But don't you dare let this hit the front page around here; I don't have the money to pay for better than a bottom-level Slicehost VPS. (Though that's a far sight better than the Dreamhost shared hosting account RC was on when it made its debut around here...)

So tell your friends, fellow coder geeks and language enthusiasts.


And before you say anything, yes, I know there are sites that do similar things. When we hit the front page of Slashdot two years ago, I put all the ones people mentioned into one page.