What the Bleep, Take 2

After watching What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? for the first time, i wanted to write something, only i couldn’t bring my self to write anything else but WOW…

Seeing it for the second time, it’s still WOW but with some focused on a few points, the first of which is fear.

Since it describes so good, the way that i think, taking it farther and deeper then i can with my tools/knowledge, i cant help but asking my self what am i going to do with all that knowledge?! Having said that this is the way i think, the movie shouldn’t come as a News flush, and it doesn’t. It’s just enforces all i was thinking about, giving it a name. Analyzing my actions i come to the conclusion that it’s fear that prevents me from taking a different direction in the my way of thinking, priorities or anything else that sets the tone in my life.

… And now that i face the problem, i should be half way to solving it…. hmm, am i?
Am not sure…., and a big part of it is that i am in a comfort zone. I have a n enjoyable job that pays well, a family i love and want to keep safe(according to my perception of safety that influenced by the society i live in) and i have my own and family’s health(guess that one should have bean first!).

I am too comfortable to be in a state of mind of “I must change my life”. I am sure that once one of the “comfort zone” building block starts weakening (not to mention crushing) i will get closer to that state of mind. Now, this an absurd way of thinking and applying the following equation:
if( i believe BLEEP is==right && BLEEP == dooms day solution )

Something i should do now = BLEEP!!!!!!

I shouldn’t wait for anything bad to happened to me, i am better off doing it from my comfort zone. Only question is can i do it from here? or better yet- what will i need to change in my way of life (this is the point fear is ringing his bell). Some of what i may need to change, is thing i have learned to think i can’t do without.

Starting this post i wrote this (thinking out load) :

…thinking 2 sentences ahead i get to dead-end…

I decided not to go that way. Writing it would give me no chance of exploring other more progressive options.

It may not look as if i am in a different place then writing it to begin with, only it sure doesn’t feel like i am at a dead-end. I may not have a solutions but i think having more questions of how to get there, is better then giving up, and sitting around waiting for the my nightmares to come true.

Reflecting on what i got from the movie, it comes down to “What the BLEEP! do we (k)now?!”.

See the move!

The greatest challenge, in making a good game design, as Nabeel Hyatt (or should i say David Armor) blogged:

Entertainment is offscreen. Your friends know you a lot better than any game designer could, let them provide the entertainment.

Creating a world and then stepping aside, so a player will live the game experience, in his own individual way, and still make it interesting for him. The way i see it, this it the hardest thing of all in game design, because the only reason for me to stick with a game, is if i live the game away from the computer, or when on it, experience more then any special effect can ever stimulate me.

Such a game is Fable by Lionhead, in which you can only save the game not being in a game. No, limitation on saving a game isn’t something new. But using it in a way that makes the game more challenging, and interesting, is brilliant.
Playing it you can be pick a side- good or bad. Some actions appear to be so trivial, that you pay no attention and unintentionally… do bad(same as my real life). “Getting to this point in the quest- i will not go back to start over from the last save… ” and so I’m continuing to save later on.

What happens, you have a game in which, it’s not so easy to be good. And the strangle between haven and hell continues.

It’s only a game, and yet they get you to worry what will your mother have to say about it…;-) . i doubt if that was designed in the game.

Survival of DNA

I have once herd, a philosophical theory, about us as a container to carry around a group of cells, referred to as: DNA.

The great machine, our body, mind…. sol, aimed only to preserve our genes. Pass it on to the next generation, so we will leave for ever. The thing that got me thinking about it, is the fact that, it boils down to the basics of our lives. Pure survival.
It’s looking to the road is clear to pass.
It’s getting up for work, so we have money on our table(as we all know it gets much more complex that).
It’s pay attention to drinking enough, so we don’t get dehydrated.
It’s thinking ahead, so we can avoid an immediate situations in which we feel threatened by … anything.
Now threat is something we each see differently. A threat for one, is the greatest thrill for another. So trying to determine the way, we (as a society) make up those moral/ethic rules to follow. Taking a different direction is sometimes going in to the unknown. Some may see that place you are heading, as dangerous, e responsible while some may see it as conservative.
Different cultures have sometimes different path, then our own, hell sometimes it’s our neighbor with a totally different perspective.

Which is the right path to go? i guess for the DNA it may well be being a criminal, as long as by standards of that individual community, he considered as dominant. Conservatively speaking, that person puts him self in greater risk, for his genes to end with him (in some cases premeturly).
If Survival of our genes , is the all story, then all our morel/ethics, are taken from the physical world we live in. Psychics and biology are the two factors to the biggest equation off all- living. Notice i didn’t consider, psychological, since that is only a response to the equation. Trying to play with the numbers, maybe it will add up to something more.

If that is so, where is god in all of this?i think it was Gottfried Leibniz , that said god gave us the best of all worlds, which implies there could have been others. Morally, that raises the question whether our ethics is absolute, or just a reaction to the circumstances. Given a different world, we could live in a world in which man, can bring children. I wonder where does, it put us then- may there would have been less wars?!

God or not, it is perfect…we have it all right here.

Still not clear what i want to say here. I guess it will make sense some day…. To Be continued.

Second Life

Reading Social Software: Second Life or World of Warcraft? got me thinking about Second life and where is it actually going.

With his description of Second Life as chaos, it reminded me of the way the internet was first viewed. Now i am not saying Second Life is the next big evolution, but enabling 3rd parties to create the content, it’s only a meter of time for the right strategy to be taken. It may be some other virtual world platform, designed in a new approach, of user personalized.

I for one, needing to do some shopping, would love going to a visual-mall, instead of typing shopping.com (a company i once work in), or even better entering the 3d shopping.com mall. Maybe it would even be possible for my to build MyShopping.com compiled only by my personalized taste. i could walk around, see what others are liking. I am sure retailers would love for buyers to be able to actually see that the item they where after almost is sold out!

The Question: is Second life it? would they be the ones to get in to the history pages or are they yet another glorified chat room? As Alex Bosworth concluded:

For experiments and new services, chaos works well and is a lot more interesting, but as things mature people want something that just works rather than something that has promise and flexibility

When people start wanting, some Google/MS/Outbrain …;-) will step up and deliver. Faced with the right  man/woman, the problem will become a great coporate with greater solutions. For that reason, i think the idea of Open Source Second Life will be a great step by Linden Lab, in making a multi-diciplain virtual-world- much like our chaotic one, in our First life!

Chaos in Battlefield …. 2

No, i am not talking about any particular battlefield, and no, there never was a post titled Battlefield 1.
The Battlefield in question, is the second title in the successful game, published by EA.

Now i have seen a few combat games in my life, only there is something that made the game standout for me.
Was it the lack of story line? …. no.
Was it the relatively small number of maps? … no.
Was it the excellent feeling when driving a Tank/Hammer/ATV? …. no (…well it might have helped a little).

I can go on elaborating on Dice’s (the Developer Studio) excellent work, creating this game. But the one thing that make this game, doesn’t come in the box. It’s the huge range of freewill in doing – what you want, where you want and when will it go down. This is achieved by allowing the player a broad set of:

• Targets- whether it’s a flag to take or a radar station to take down, or just supporting another squad to achieving their goals.
• Locations- different flag locations cal for different strategic planning and engagin. that requires the player to be versatile in his approach.
• Means- to achieve a goal, the player can:
  • Choose his role in the squad – sniper, assault , medic … commander. Each of them, when used correctly, can have a tremendous affect on the battle.
  • Select the best transportation – Helicopter, F-16, Jeep and many more.
  • Managing the battle:
    • Squad member – following orders.
    • Squad leader- Following the commander orders and set the goals by your self, which includes requesting artillery and more.
    • Commander- controlling all squads, and assigning orders

All this options really do make a difference and the great thing about them is there in no one way to get things done.

That said, take in to account another factor, you (as a player) are not alone. Regardless of your personal progress in the game, whether you are hiding as a sniper just to get that one shot, the game gos on, and simultaneously all over the game. The Enemy will not wait for you to act, nor will your AI brothers in arm. This behavior can be considered as the other Battlefield soldiers free will.

Acting in a world where all have free will – now that rings a bell …. where have i seen it before? ha, life! This is the inner force each of us have, and one of the major ingredients that makes our coarse of life unpredictable. We often change our mind, and so do other people around us. Interaction is the glue that binds it all together in to one chaotic system, to which we refer to as – Life!

As in life, there are no 2 alike, the same goes in the Battlefield- no 2 are alike. No meter how hard you can try to make exactly the same moves, the game will never be the same.

Like most games today Battlefield is a multilayer game which turns the Battlefield to the closest thing to a real battle field. So when it comes to multilayer game this game isn’t that different then any other in it’s chaotic nature.

Like the weather, a chaotic system, may be in a very specific area. Usually it’s just something that we can’t understand or measure. War certainly qualifies as such, and Dice did a great work simulating it in a computer.

The major fun factor in the game isn’t something done in code, it’s all that happens between the lines of code. From hear it can be interesting to see a sequel by Dice, that will enhance the chaos by adding higher chain of command – which will involve bigger maps, and wining or losing a battlefield will have a bigger affect on the rest of the battlefields.

I hope that when it comes to this, doing “Milluim”(reserve military service) will be logging in to Battlefield-IDF.

Glossary – chaos

Wow … defining the chaos, not an easy thing to do, maybe impossible Wikipedia say’s:

Chaos (derived from the Greek Χάος, Chaos) typically refers to unpredictabilit. The word χάος did not mean “disorder” in classical-period ancient Greece. It meant “the primal emptiness, space“. It is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root ghn or ghen meaning “gape, be wide open”: compare “chasm” (from Greek χάσμα), and Anglo-Saxon gānian (“yawn”), geanian, ginian (“gape wide”); see also Old Norse Ginnungagap. Due to people misunderstanding early Christian uses of the word, the meaning of the word changed to “disorder”. (The Ancient Greek for “disorder” is ταραχή.). Mathematically chaos means an aperiodic deterministic behavior which is very sensitive to its initial conditions, i.e., infinitesimal perturbations of boundary conditions for a chaotic dynamic system originate finite variations of the orbit in the phase space; see chaos theory.

So now that’s set, and the definition is there for all to see, way bother confronting it?

Well a few day’s ago, I told my sister about this blog, and talking about the subject at hand, I laid about my Chaos Theory and our life’s in it. It didn’t take much time for her to ask me whether I have a solution to the problem, of Chaos in our life’s, and then it came to me, that not all see the chaos the way I do. In about than same time I read a post “What business are you in?” by Yaron, and that raised the question “What chaos do you know?”

Mentioning the chaos in different people’s ears would bring up different perspectives in to the nature of the Chaos.
Some see it as the outcome of anarchy- a world with no rules.
AS mentioned in the Wikipedia definition Christianity, looked at chaos as disorder.
When describing the behavior of near field RFID in a lecture about RFID, the lecturer got upset to the mentioning of the phrase in this scientific context.

So, what is my chaos? …
Answering that is impossible for me. Like defining God, we can only say what he isn’t. The same is with the Chaos. Actually thinking about it …. Chaos is my God. It’s not the kind you should worship or be scared of, it’s the kind that in some magical way, makes the world that way it is. Similar to physics, in which everything can one day happened due to the collision of 2 atoms, everything can happened given the right circumstances.

For conclusion, what I can say is that chaos isn’t a bad thing! it’s the divine perfection.

Intro…

I wonder how many bloggers started their way with the thought in mind -”Where to start?!”, although once you get to the point of starting the first blog post, you have already came up with a few ideas to writ about.

As such i come with a few philo – ok where was i? …. ha ….and again (just finished feeding the 8 month old Itamar) – ok . As such i come with a few philosophies of my own, i keep straggling with first few lines (i hope), to what i should start with, and then it came to me, to start as if we know each other for years. so …

Chaos, i hope you got your hopes up by the title “… chaos”, to my opinion, always sound impressive, it may also be pretentious of me to even pretend to know anything about the Chaos. For that reason i allow my self to write anything that comes to mind, after all it was Philip Merilees who said

“Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” (Wikipedia -Butterfly effect ).

so i will not presume to know the Chaos, but just to observe it from where i stand.

What will i write about? i don’t feel obligated to any particular subject, except that other word in the title – “Life …”.
the thing that interest me this days are:

My kids- Omri 2.5 years old, and Itamar (which i already introduced) – For the sake of the reader that will never know what it’s like to be the father of thos 2 amizing human beens they are (which i think it’s most of you), i will not write about them as much (no promisses).

My Philosophy- “love of wisdom” (Origin and meaning of term)… well i hope some posts will have some kind of wisdom within, I’m quite sure i will disclose in some of my posts the phrase – “excuse my ignorance”, so not all of them are going to make it to the history pages, but – in those cases the wisdom is not at hand, just remember- that’s all part of the chaos, and in some cases i actually believe that. On the same subject i have some thoughts about chaos in religion (starting from my own), but i will leave something for later (and no i am not religions).

Video Games- As for the debate whether they can be considered art, for me there is no question, not only it’s art, it’s also (in some cases) a mini cosmos of our world, an expression of our “wanna’bes”. Some see it in a bad way, a place where our kids are crossing over to the dark side. didn’t give it much attention until writing this lines. All i am sure of- it’s a different world I’m in when i game.

Last but not least, my occupation as a programmer- software engineer, call it as you like, for me that to is an art. Creating a mini universe with it’s own set of rules, from nothing.
I recently joined a a bunch of sailors, setting sails (So said Ori )to an unknown land called the blogshare, The ships name is Outbrain, founded the above and his brother in arms- Yaron Galai.
Working in outbrain introduced me to the world of blogs, and to my surprise hear i am writing one. I know i have what to say, only i didn’t think it would be something i would do, considering the media-mediums that where available until now.
Given the change at hand, i am very excited to work in this new land, especially due to the reason, that in my eyes this is chaos, in some way, it’s finding a hole in the matrix.
Apart from this working in Outbrain, makes me think “what votes will i get?” (like someone is going to read it other then my colleagues) .

Well i think it’s enough for an intro.
I really hope some one will benefit from this, so …… until next time(i wonder when will that be- it’s taken me ages to get this one done)…
…Enjoy.