Fitness and Stress Loss (Part 1)

Since my shoulder surgery and physical therapy I've begun to go to the gym in the mornings. No one should see the side of 6am I've been seeing, but if it reduces my weight, increases blood flow, reduces stress and overall makes work more bearable; I'll do it.

I've been out for a couple weeks due to the Cornell/Indiana visit and the cold I've been percolating. Monday I start back again and I thought it time to begin to document my progress. Documentation can be reinforcing and enlightening as I try to reach my goals. So today I take my weight, and throughout the weeks, each day I'll blog about my attempts at increasing my activity while fixing my diet (not dieting, two seperate concepts). Every so often I'll check the scale and see if there has been progress.

Today's starting weight: *cough*272*cough*

UDS-N +2

Its sunday after UDS-N and I thought I'd take the day to sum up the resources that were identified to me this past week in Orlando.

I found out about communication in the ubuntu community

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DeveloperCommunication

like the IRC groups

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InternetRelayChat

The mailing lists

https://lists.ubuntu.com/

and the BeginnersTeam

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BeginnersTeam/

Probably the most helpful session was one on Ubuntu and the Community On Ramp, http://pad.ubuntu-uk.org/tGmNOVtxk5. They talked there how to better explain how someone can become involved with Ubuntu and how to explain all the opportunities that are present. Some of the most helpful documents from that session was a couple sites that the community and Jono had been putting together. The first is the unity involvement site,

http://unity.ubuntu.com/getinvolved/.

It has a nice layout and resources that I've yet to review but look like they will be very helpful. The second was a site that I believe Jono was working on,

http://developer.recreantview.org/.

This site had recommended tools, tutorials, and a path to getting involved. It needed some work (the center graphic starts with develop, the matching links top and bottom start with create) but so far has been fairly helpful.

The another helpful session I went to was on PaperCuts, https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/other-design-n-papercuts. Every cycle/release the community picks 100 items that are small usability errors that are typically considered trivial. There was alot of great information about getting the beginners team involved.

I needed to leave early to get back to Gainesville so my wife and I could drive to a wedding. I happen to see a session about Launchpad and Bzr and I commented on it to Chris. By chance I made my comment while Chris was sitting next to someone from OpenStack. They have a tutorial on LaunchPad and Bzr on thier site at

http://wiki.openstack.org/LifeWithBzrAndLaunchpad

Products of UDS-N

First post in my blog for a long time. Lets be honest this was a place for me to try out blogging, nothing more. However, I have a new mission for my blog. To capture my attempt to begin helping and developing in the Ubuntu community. UDS has inspired me to become apart of this really amazing community. During one session about developer resources it was suggested that I write about my experience and tell people about it. I'm putting this little post in to remind me of my commitment and hopefully over the next few weeks I'll post about getting started.

RIP David Eddings

Early this week one of the greatest Fantasy Writers of our time passed away. You brought us Belgarion and Sparhawk and Athulus. You will be truly missed.

Glee

Being married means I watch shows that I wouldn't usually watch, but end up enjoying. We watched the preview for Glee and the concept of the show sounds like Sister Act as a serial TV show, where a teacher both instructs his students and learns himself in the process. I had hope, that it would be something I could enjoy. I still have some hope, but it starting out very predictable.

The most obvious plot point, is the drama with his controlling wife, who may or may not be pregnant, and the quirky fellow teacher who swoons whenever he is around. Its very similar to Jim and Pam from the office or one of a hundred other TV romances. We also have the jock whose tender and loves to sing, any may or may not have a triangle with the female lead and his current cheerleader girlfriend.

I have hope that it will break away from the TV stereotypes and return with a show where the drama is in the struggles of the teacher and students, and not in their love life's, but after Greys Anatomy and Smallville and House, I don't have a lot of hope for TV left.

Penny Arcade Game - On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness Episode 1

Attempting to be shorter, this game is a beautiful combination of the online comic world and video games. The art work is like walking through one of Gabe and Tycho's comics. The dialog while often a bit wordy is still as funny as ever. It reminds me a bit of playing a final fantasy version of psychonauts. The only bad thing I can say ... its too short. Good thing the second one is out already.

Gears of War

When my friend first suggested I picked up Gears of War 2 for my new Xbox 360 I thought, great a 50 dollar game that the best I'm going to get out of it is the ability to play with my friend online who is several states away.

I'm glad I was wrong.

It looks like one of a million 1st person shooters out there in the world. I've played Brother in Arms on the original Xbox and the whole point is move forward, take cover, force the enemy to take cover, flank and eliminate. Very similar concept in Gears, except the enemy seems to know where you are. Machine gun turrents don't blindly attack the men you left behind, they turn to force you to take cover too. Enemies break off to from the main attacking force to meet you as you attempt to flank. Cover is valuable here and being able to move smoothly from cover to cover and charge across open ground into cover are very valuable skills. I went back and played the first Gears of War and found a similar experience. Its as if the game developers scoured every article about games similar to their own and attempted to fix the things people didn't like.

As much as I enjoyed the game mechanics I found myself wanting a little more from the characters and exposition. Someone put a lot of thought into creating a back story to the characters and the world. The environment is rich and while the enemy matches your typical Hell/Zombie/Alien enemy the story that seems to emerge is inventive and different, while following similar lines. While all of this work in back story and characterization seems to be put in place the actual amount of information you are given seems to take a page out of John Frankenheimer's Ronin, the audience's imagination is meant to fill in the blanks.

With the metal case in Ronin I understand, the case isn't important, and not knowing only makes you more curious. In Gears of War the holes feel more like plot holes than things to think on. Its as if the game designer thought up this beautiful story but after a few hours of putting it into story boards decided that was good enough. For Example, in the beginning of the first game the main character is alone, locked up in a jail with no guards because everyone has been pardoned ... wait ... what? So in a prision full of people who have done horrible things, one man is left to be slaughtered by the incoming locusts? All you needed was a few guards and inmates scrambling to leave being wiped out before the players eyes by the locusts. Thats all you need to explain why he was left alone, you could also leave a few other inmates locked in there cells destined to suffer the fate that could have befallen Marcus.

Sometimes the measure of a good FPS is not its story or even the regular game play, but its all in about the multi-player. Gears of War has many unique multi-player levels. My favorite is Hoard, waves of Locusts enemies attack in increasing difficulty and you must band together with fellow XBox players to fight them off. Its not just run around and shoot, tactics are key, find a location set people to defend all angles and be ready to come to the aid of your comrades when the enemy attempts to overrun thier position. I haven't had this much fun playing multiplayer since Goldeneye came out on the N64. In addition to Horde there is capture the flag where the flag is a person armed with a shotgun, Defend the leader where you respawn until your leader is killed, and a standard frag match where you can't bleed out, you have to be executed for the other team to get a point.

Despite the lack of exposition and explanation, I found Gears of War I and II to be exteremely enjoyable games. They are not the innovative experience you might find in Psychonauts, Trauma Center, or Goldeneye, but they are well worth adding to your own experience.