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Personal blog of Erlend Aakre

Welcome to my blog containing sporadic personal ramblings, coding, electronics, D&D and anything else.

Fedcon 2011 - Day 0

2011-06-08

conventions

conventions fedcon fedcon-2011 sci-fi geek germany bonn amsterdam aqua-teen-hunger-force arrested-development conventions dusseldorf rocking-chair train tv waybackmachine

Wednesday 27.04.2011

Today was the day before the convention. I got on the train from Amsterdam 14:30, and spent 2 hours looking at the Dutch and German countryside wooshing by backwards. Lots of cows, trees, windmills, a lama, some sheeps, grass, trains, etc…

When I changed trains in Drüisburg, I was pretty sure I had gone on the wrong train (I think it left earlier than it should according to my ticket), but was positively surprised to find myself at the same train station I had been at 2 years earlier when taking the train to from Düsseldorf to Bonn.

I arrived at my hotel (which had a rocking chair! yay!) around 6 , chilled a bit, and made my way to the supermarket to get some soft drinks and food. Ended the night by watching Arrested Development and an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force (which is total rubbish, seriously? people actually enjoy that show? where did the world go so horribly wrong?).

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Toodledo API (simple java version)

2011-06-05

coding

coding software java toodledo list bugs xml api dom waybackmachine

I wanted to get a list of all the bugs for my Star Trek game, that I have registered at Toodledo and have them listed on the Trekwar wiki.

Toodledo offers a nicely done API, but there was no java implementation, there were a couple of unofficial ones, but I decided to write my own very simple basic program for connecting to Toodledo and getting all the tasks as XML, and parsing them into a simple Java object. So if you’re doing something similar, this program might be a nice place to start. To keep it as short as possible, comments and exception handling is pretty much not there :)

Note: This program was made to run once per hour. Running it many times in a row will cause Toodledo to ban you for about 1 hour. When that happens there will be a IndexOutOfBoundsException -7 from the method that gets the session token. This can be fixed by saving the token you get between requests, and not asking for a new one each time (which is what causes the short ban).

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Looking forward to E3 2011

2011-05-31

gaming

gaming e3 2k-games battlefield bethesda elder-scrolls ea fps oblivion rpg skyrim starwars swtor xcom waybackmachine

It’s almost time for E3, where the Gaming studios release lots of new info, screenshots and videos from the games they are working on.

This year I only got a few games I’m excited about:

X-Com (2K Games/Take-Two)

I’m a huge fan of the original X-Com games, but so far I’ve been unimpressed by the video (the black blob being chased around). But hopefully some more interesting gameplay footage will be released.

Battlefield 3 (Electronic Arts):

Not really a big FPS gamer, but I enjoyed Bad Company 2 alot, and Battlefield 3 looks awesome.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda):

Never finished Oblivion (was not a huge fan of the combat system), but if time permits I might play Skyrim.

Dead Island (Deep Silver):

Got noticed for the really awesome trailer, but not so sure about the game itself. Seems like Left 4 Dead with minor RPG elements added. It seems to focus very much on melee combat, and I’m afraid it will be too much of a hack and slash game (not a fan).

Star Wars: The Old Republic (Electronic Arts):

Saved the best for last. I hope they will provide LOTS of new information and gameplay videos from the latest builds. This is the game I’m looking the most forward to as of 2011, and I’m definitely going to play it when it’s released.

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Increasing earthquakes?

2011-05-14

science

science skepticism conspiration-theory correlation earth earthquake statistics usgs frequency geology java code waybackmachine
Are earthquakes increasing in strength or frequency?

I just found myself in a debate where the opposition claims that earthquakes are on the rise (judgement day, wrath of god, etc..), being slightly skeptical I of course needed evidence, and where better to get it than to analyse it for myself from the actual data?

How many earthquakes are there? I went to the United States Geological Survey for the raw data, they have a pretty big list named “selected earthquakes of general historic interest” (6.0+) earthquakes recorded (ordered by magnitude, strongest quake first) which seems to be used often to support the argument of increasing earthquakes.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/historical_mag_big.php (Archived)

I then made a small computer program to parse the text and output it in csv format:
```
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.Reader;
import java.util.ArrayList;

class Quake {
    public int year;
    public double strength;
}

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        ArrayList<Quake> quakes = new ArrayList<Quake>();
        try {
            loadQuakes(quakes);
        }
        catch(IOException ioe) {
            System.err.println(ioe);
        }

        generateStatistics(quakes);
    }

    private static void loadQuakes(ArrayList<Quake> quakes) throws IOException {
        Reader r = new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream("quakes.txt"));
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(r);

        String line = br.readLine();
        while(line != null && line.length() > 5) {
            String[] res = line.split(" ");

            Quake q = new Quake();
            q.year = Integer.parseInt(res[0]);
            q.strength = Double.parseDouble(res[res.length-1]);
            System.out.println(q.year + "," + q.strength);

            quakes.add(q);
            line = br.readLine();
        }

        System.out.println("Loaded " + quakes.size() + " quakes");
    }
}
```
data text file: quakes.txt (program input)
csv result file: quakes.csv (program output)

add this into open office and make a graph:

This graph makes it look like earthquakes are running rampant, and you might have seen a very similar graph on the Internet (YouTube and other places), used by conspiracy cranks as an argument that earthquakes are increasing. But fortunately this graph is very misleading.

this is because the data used to make it is complete rubbish, to quote the page the date is collected from: “selected earthquakes of general historic interest”.. These quakes have been hand picked as the most interesting ones, and the data has a HUGE bias towards newer earthquakes, so you can’t make any meaningful statistics out of it (except if you are making statistics of which earthquakes the guy who compiled this data finds “interesting”).

Update (Real data)

A scientist at the USGS was kind enough to send me a datafile with all the 7.0+ earthquakes from 1900 to 2010. Making some graphs from those data yields results consistent with what the experts on earthquakes are saying.. They are totally random and unpredictable, and there has been no increase of earthquakes since we started recording them:

NOTE: Unfortunately as this post is recovered from my old blog using the WayBackMachine only the smaller resized images have been saved

Frequency of earthquakes from 1900 to 2010:

Earthquakes by month:

Earthquakes by day of month:

Earthquakes by time of day:
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Majesty 2 review

2011-05-13

gaming

gaming review majesty-2 majesty steam strategy sean-connery simulation waybackmachine

I recently got Majesty 2 on steam. And to sum it up in 1 sentence: “Majesty 2 sucks!”

Majesty 2 is a RTS game which calls itself a “kingdom simulator” with RPG elements. You build structures, but never control the units directly. The units live their own lives, level up, buy gear at the blacksmith and generally just go around like little tiny virtual idiots.

The graphics are charming and gives the game a nice fantasy atmosphere, building is fun, researching techs are pleasant and the RPG features of the heroes you recruit seems really good. Also the concept of not controlling units directly but by placing out flags (putting bounties on enemy structures or creatures, or putting up exploration flags) does seem pretty interesting.

However there are three major issues that are just bad game design and ruins what could have been a pretty enjoyable game:

Sewer entrace spawn points

The first thing I noticed that I knew instantly was going to grid my gears for the entire game was one or two spawn points that always pop up in your town. These frequently release various rats that will kill your peasants, damage your buildings and just be a constant source of annoyance the entire mission, for ALL missions. Don’t get me wrong, sewers is a classic RPG setting, and if done correctly it could have been very entertaining, but it ends up being a steady stream of annoyance without any reward or fun. Imagine 3 zerg popping up in your base in Starcraft EVERY fucking minute, worst idea ever.

AI

Another annoying factor is the AI. It’s piss poor… You have ranged/melee dps and a healer class, but watching them trying to do anything is like watching the worst PUG of noobs trying to down a boss in WOW.. It’s just ends up being a painful display of ineptitude. And the cloth users seems to have a particularly strong death wish, and constantly go in for some melee dps. The enemy AI is even worse than your own heroes. I saw 3 skeletons chase a wounded ranger across the map while their home was being destroyed by a warrior.

Borders + combat

Let’s get one thing straight, you will not be able to have any clearly defined zones of combat, fronts or build a good defense for your town like you can in for example Starcraft, Warcraft, Age of Empires or basically any RTS game. The enemies will be many, they will be spread out all over the map, new enemies will spawn pretty much constantly even when their spawn points are taken out. The enemies are stupid as hell and just consists of groups of enemies that attack in waves without any form of strategy.

Voice acting

Not as big a problem as the 3 above, but it’s still a bit funny :) It seems they have hired a single voice actor to do the game, he will tell you your quest objectives and talk during all cut scenes, intros, etc.. Now this would not be a problem, except they got a goddamn Sean Connery sound-alike who does an excessive Scottish accent. He sounds like “Sean Connery” from the Saturday Night Live sketch, and it get’s really hard to take anything he says seriously.. I keep expecting him to say something like “The minotaurs has destroyed the village, Suck it Trebek!”

Rating: 3.7 / 10

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Google maps Trondheim

2011-05-07

software

computer software google maps motorcycle street-view tiller trondheim waybackmachine

Two days ago something wonderful happened:

These old, horribly dark, depressing, winter aerial photos of Trondheim got replaced by new high resolution summer-time ones :)

Before

After

Why do I care you might ask?

Because I love maps, and I spend an unhealthy amount of time at Google maps =)

Google also finally got street view coverage to Tiller (the souther part of Trondheim where I live). I can even see my motorcycle parked outside:

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