Single Digit Kyu

After a year of study and effort, I have successfully achieved a ranking of 9 Kyu in the game of Go. Here's a nifty chart representing my progress over the last 12 months:



For those unaware of the ranking and rating system used in Go, here is a brief summary:

"Kyu" stands for student ranking, and counts down from 30. Hence, a player who has just learned the rules would be ranked at 30 kyu. Lower kyu rankings indicate more advanced playing. A new beginner would find himself rated somewhere between 30 and 20 kyu, while a casual player would find himself rated somewhere between 20 and 10 kyu.

I've finally broken into the single digit kyu rankings, indicating my status as an intermediate amateur.

After advancing beyond 1 kyu, a player is given a "dan" ranking (as opposed to "kyu"), which counts upward from 1. Thus, after 1 kyu comes 1 dan, then 2 dan, and so on, up until 7 dan. A dan-ranked player is a serious amateur, and a high dan ranking can indicate the potential to play professionally (which has its own, parallel system of ranks, also called "dans," and ranging from 1-dan to 9-dan).

This ranking system is similar to the colored belt ranking system used in martial arts. The kyu ranks are then analogous to various colored belts, and 1 dan is equivalent to a black belt. The ranking system also makes it easy for players of different ranks to play on an equal playing field together - the less advanced player simply receives a handicap of X number of free turns at the start, where X is the difference in ranks.

My rank, and the above chart, are calculated using the games I play on the KGS Go Server, one of the most popular on-line Go-playing communities. The rank is continually adjusted, both as I play and as my previous opponents continue to play, so that rankings can accurately reflect each players' skill with respect to one another, using the history of all games played on the server, between all opponents.

Admittedly, I did take one or two breaks of a month or so. This is reflected in the smooth portions of the chart above, where my rank continued to increase automatically, as my previous victories against opponents counted more since my previous opponents continued to improve. The jittery portions are when I was more active, reflecting the constant fluctuations in my calculated rank as I both won and lost games.

Reaching single-digit kyu has been a specific goal of mine for a while, as it now puts me within striking distance of several advanced players that I know in person. My next specific goal is to reach a level of 5 or 6 kyu. Though my ultimate long-term goal is to be as good as I possibly can, for now I think I would be quite satisfied to reach 1 dan, even if I never improve beyond that - so that can be my specific long term goal for the time being.

Reaching 5 or 6 kyu will not be easy - it may take as long as it has taken me to reach 9 kyu (from 30), which was about a year. And reaching 1 dan may take 2 or 3 years.

But the progress is enjoyable, so I think I will be able to stick with it. You can always check on my most recent progress by clicking the link on the right menu, and if you would like to play, I can be found on KGS - my username is just my first name.

The Fire Rises

Almost exactly four years ago, I remember specifically being blown away by Heath Ledger's voice as the Joker in the theatrical trailer for "The Dark Knight." I even wrote about it here. I had been worried about his voice, ever since it had been ever-so-briefly teased the summer before. But after that trailer, I knew his voice would be the one I heard in my head when reading the comics. And six months later, I was not certainly disappointed by what I would come to see as the definitive interpretation of the Clown Prince.

What's funny is that now, having seen the prologue for "The Dark Knight Rises" in an early screening, I find myself once again most struck by the voice of the featured villain - in this case, Bane.

Like before, I had been worried about how Tom Hardy would sound as Bane. Early spy footage leaked from the set in Pittsburgh featured a few lines from Bane, giving the impression of a weak, old, British man. It was a caricature and a joke, and I feared the worst.

But in the film itself, Bane sounds entirely different. Bane as a character is intense, and his voice matches. It's eery and cold. Distorted and warped. Muffled, yet clearly hiding a man who strives to be articulate and calculating. Confident and sure. Mechanical

Comparisons have been made to Darth Vader, but I think it would be far more accurate to compare it to a mechanized Jeremy Irons from "Die Hard 3."

Will "The Dark Knight Rises" be as good as "The Dark Knight?"

I don't know.

But I do know that one of my biggest fears has been put to rest.

I won't be laughing when I see Bane breaking the Bat, six months from now.

Bat Graffiti

In Gotham City, everyone knows who Batman is. Some fear him, while others see him as a symbol of hope and justice. Those that do pay homage to him and his presence, in whatever way they see fit.



I found this graffiti art spray painted behind my apartment building.

What's really interesting to me is the choice of subject - rather than the Batman of the movies or the comics, this is the Batman of "Batman Beyond," a cartoon that aired between 1999 and 2001, featuring a new cyberpunk Batman of the future, trained by an elderly, dying Bruce Wayne.

It's generally held in very high regard by critics and Batman aficionados, especially for its darker themes, but because of its limited broadcast period and specific target demographic, its fanbase is relatively small and its familiarity amongst the general audience even smaller. Hence, the pleasant surprise at seeing him used as the focus for this graffiti artist

Manual Exploits

One of the oldest traditions in video gaming culture is that of the manual exploit.

In a video game, an exploit means taking advantage of the system, for personal gain, in a way that the original programmers did not intend or foresee. Abusing a glitch or bug in the program to gain invincibility for your character would be one example.

A manual exploit, then, is taking advantage of a physical vulnerability in the system in ways that the programmers did not intend or foresee, often via a design flaw in the controller.

Perhaps the most famous example of a manual exploit from the old days is the "pencil trick" from "Track and Field."

"Track and Field" was an arcade game from the early 80s in which you competed in several simulated track and field events, such as the 100 meter dash, the javelin throw, and the high jump. Running in a race was accomplished via the use of two buttons - one for the left foot and one for the right foot.

It was important to push these buttons as rapidly as you could - but only in an alternating fashion. So a consistent rhythm was just as important as speed. Just as in a real race, where you need to put your left foot forward after your right foot, and your right foot forward after your left foot, the game would not advance your character along the track if you did something stupid like trying to move your left foot forward twice before moving your right foot.

Obviously, the faster you could push your consistent rhythm, and the longer you could maintain it, the sooner you would complete the race and the higher your score would be. If you were good enough, you might even get your initials in the high score board.

Gamers are a notoriously competitive lot, however, and the reward of having your initials at the top of high score board, for all challengers to see, was enough to motivate several devious gangsters into figuring out a way to game the system.

Hence, the "pencil trick" was born, which was described as follows by an old gamer:

"To prepare, take a pencil and thread it over your middle finger and under your index and ring fingers of your left hand. Place your middle finger between the left and right buttons, with the erase on the left button. Then, push down your ring finger, so it presses down on the button.

When you're ready to start, tap quickly with your right hand on the index finger side of the pencil, so that it pushes down on that right button. Continue to maintain pressure with your ring finger, so the pencil immediately presses back down on the left button."

In essence, a pencil is used as a see-saw between the buttons, pressing left and right, over and over, with your middle finger as the fulcrum. The result is an easily-maintained, yet lightning fast, perfect rhythm, which could never be achieved by two fingers alone. The player ends up with an incredible race time - and an equally incredible score.

More than one crafty gamer used such a manual exploit to guarantee their unbeatable high scores - and their initials - would remain indefinitely at the top of each "Track and Field" arcade cabinet in their hometowns. Of course, plenty of variations existed, as the technique was duplicated independently by multiple gamers all over the world - from a "spoon trick" to a "buzzsaw trick."

Well, I'm glad to see that the spirit of the manual exploit is alive and well in gamers today, as this clever gamer demonstrates a manual exploit in the very recently released "The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword:"



In this section of the game, your character is supposed to swing his sword left and right as quickly as he can, in order to try and chop the falling bamboo stalk into as many pieces as possible before it hits the ground. The sword's movement is controlled by the motion of the Wiimote controller, in a direct 1:1 correspondence. Swinging the controller left makes the the sword swing left, swinging right moves the sword to the right and - just as importantly - swinging up and down moves the sword vertically, meaning the sword can move at any angle and at any speed that the player wishes to.

Again, speed isn't the only factor - your ability to maintain a perfectly horizontal motion, back and forth, is also important, as swinging at an angle will push the falling bamboo off to the side, making it harder to score as many slices before the bamboo hits the ground.

Here, the gamer has tricked the Wiimote controller into thinking it's swinging back and forth in a blazingly fast, perfect motion, by attaching it to a spinning bicycle wheel. The details of why this trick works* isn't important - I just think it's cool that he was able to figure out how to use such a manual exploit.

I know I wouldn't have considered attaching my Wiimote to a bicycle wheel. But then, that's why I can barely manage chopping the bamboo into 30 slices, and he's almost reached 40!

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* Footnote: If you're interested in the technical details of why it works, here's my theory: First, he calibrates the Wiimote into thinking that pointing straight upward is in fact pointing straight into the TV, which is simply a matter of telling the Wii that the default "Zero" position of the Wiimote is when it's pointing upward. Sort of like tricking your digital scale into printing out negative weights by "Zeroing" the scale when there's a weight sitting on it.

This way, the Wii thinks that you're swinging the Wiimote purely horizontally when in actuality you are swinging it in a purely vertical manner, and vice versa.

Then, the player spins the wheel. At first, the Wii senses that the Wiimote is moving in a direction away from the "Zero" position, in what it believes to be a horizontal direction, so it swings the sword to the right, at a speed corresponding to the speed of the wheel. The Wiimote keeps spinning around the wheel, but after it spins a little past halfway, it's now found itself in a position away from the "Zero" position in the opposite direction - so it instantly moves the sword back to the left of the default, ready to swing again to the right. The Wiimote keeps spinning, swinging the sword back to the right, before the sword flips back over to the left side as the halfway point is reached a second time. And so on. The result is that the sword keeps endlessly swinging to the right, with the Wii automatically resetting the sword so that it's to the left of the bamboo stick with every spin of the bicycle wheel.

So basically, the exploit relies on the fact that the Wii considers the position of the Wiimote, when it has been rotated 270 degrees away from the "Zero" position in a clockwise direction, to be equivalent to the position of the Wiimote when it has been rotated 90 degrees away from the "Zero" position in a counter-clockwise direction.

In other words, your character on the screen doesn't actually spin around with his sword, even though you're technically trying to tell the Wii that you keep swinging the sword around and around in circles - which would only be possible if your character was swinging around in circles. Since the Wii can't reconcile these two facts, it just instantly moves the sword, and your character takes another swing at the bamboo.

The Original "Video" Game

I don't know if it was truly the first, but this arcade game certainly must be one of the oldest in existence, at an age of about 100 years:



I'm glad somebody had the imagination to see the potential to expand the scope of such machines, because this particular game seems like it would get real old, real fast.

Exploring the Federation Historical Archives

Sometimes the bridge crew of the Enterprise had movie night.



When Captain Picard talks about being inadequate at the end, I can't help but suspect that it's a reference to the fact that Chewie didn't get a medal.

That's right. The Rebels were racist.

Drunk Jeff

For some reason, Jeff Goldblum's voice and mannerisms just happen to lend themselves perfectly to a seemingly intoxicated state.

Occupy Gotham

Even playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne knows that there's something very wrong with this country.

Original Stories

It is said that there is no such thing as a new, original story - just old stories repeated, repackaged in new ways, and retold to new audiences who have not been exposed to older versions of the same story. Heroes fight villains, characters fall in love, and stories end happily or tragically. There are only so many kinds of characters and plots, and they have all been told in one form or another since man began to craft and tell stories, in the dawn of history.

The nitty gritty details may change, but the backbone is always one that's been used before. The human drama has played itself out billions of times over the last several million years. Is it sensible for a storyteller to really expect to be able to craft a story that has not already been told in one form or another?

That's not to say that there aren't good storytellers or writers, or that the effort to tell new stories is wasted or worthless, or that talent should not be admired. It just means the quality of implementation is what will set a storyteller apart - and we should recognize that, when a story seems original, it is only proof of our limited and narrow experiences, of our understanding of that which has come before, and perhaps of our mortality and the physical limitations on the effort to save stories of the past.

However, most do not realize that there is one notable exception to this rule - science-fiction.

Or perhaps more accurately, speculative fiction.

Speculative fiction is the genre of ideas. A good speculative fiction story will not simply feature characters, setting, and plot - it will also feature the exploration of new ideas. New possibilities, not grounded in the real (historical or contemporary) world of other fiction, not limited by what has come before or what exists today.

And because there will always be new ideas, there can always be original stories in speculative fiction.

Thanks to modern science, our knowledge and understanding of the universe expands every day. Out of this new knowledge is born the possibility of new ideas and new ways of perceiving the world. Out of these new ways of perceiving the world are born new ways of thinking about our reality. Out of these new ideas and ways of thinking, new stories can be born.

Maybe that's the reason I enjoy science-fiction so much more than other genres.

The Miracle of Watchmen

In discussions regarding the film adaptation of "Watchmen," whether on the internet or face-to-face with friends, I often am lead to feel that most fans (of the movie, of the book, or of the genre) do not realize how truly lucky all of us were that the "Watchmen" film was made in the first place, much less that it turned out the way it did.

Consider the fact that Warner Bros. spent $130 million to create a movie that:

-Ran 2.5 to 3 hours in length,
-Was rated "R,"
-Contained extremely graphic violence and gore, including a brutal sexual assault,
-Included quite a bit of nudity, including full-frontal male nudity and a borderline pornographic sex scene,
-Was set in a completely different era, 25 years in our past, in an alternate history,
-Featured no famous or well-known actors, and was
-Based on a book and characters that are largely unknown outside the community of comics fans (unlike universally recognizable characters like Batman).

Add to all of that the fact that "Watchmen" was an extremely faithful adaptation of the book, often panel-for-panel, and was clearly made by those who held a great deal of respect and reverence for the original source material.

What most people tend to forget is that major movie studios - the only kind that have the bank to pull off a big-budget feature like "Watchmen" - simply do not make these kinds of movies. They're far too risky. You can't make big money off of merchandising (since it's not a kids movie), you have a hard time appealing to mass audiences (since it requires relatively more extensive intellectual engagement), and you're not really telling a story that can lead to a sequel for delayed return on investment.

It's an all-or-nothing gamble, where the movie has to return a profit by selling itself, based on its own merits, to an audience that, by definition, is already narrowed and limited in scope. No big name actors or characters to help and no supplemental sources of income.

In short, it was a miracle that "Watchmen" got made, especially without any artistic compromise.

As a fan of well-written science-fiction, comic books, and "genre" literature and art, I'm used to being shit upon by the businessmen who own the IP to the characters and worlds that I love. So to me, it's a rare treat to see a major movie studio do things right - artistically and morally - even if it's not the smartest business move, and that's something that I think fans should be thankful for in this case (whether they personally liked the movie or not).

Now I'm not trying to say "Watchmen" was a perfect movie. It wasn't. I'm not even sure if it's a "great" movie (though I would at least rate it as "good"). It certainly had plenty of flaws - the graphic violence was far too over-the-top, the sex was ridiculous and laughably gratuitous, and there were times where ham-fisted directing got in the way of what would have been nearly-perfect, emotionally resonant scenes.

But we were damn lucky that we got what we did, instead of a watered-down, cheap, generic piece of crap created by executives and MBAs rather than artists. Or yet another remake or sequel, completely unrelated to a beloved, original graphic novel. Or a lazy romantic comedy or forgettable, schlocky action flick.

If you had asked me beforehand if a "Watchmen" movie would ever have gotten made at all, I would have said it was unlikely. And if you had told me that a "Watchmen" movie would not only be made, but that it would be so completely faithful, filled with moments of true vision, originality, and brilliance, without any compromise in its artistic integrity for the sake of marketability or bottom-line profits?

I would've sooner believed that Nixon could have served five terms in office.