PopCap, developer and publisher of casual hit games such as Bejeweled, Peggle and Bookworm Adventures, have funded a study that shows that playing casual games relieves stress and improves your mood. Maybe I’m just a tad cynical, but my initial response to that is a raised eyebrow and a “no excrement” look on my face. I’m not really surprised that playing a cute casual game results in joy and less stress. Isn’t that pretty much the whole point?

And wait a second… This study was funded by PopCap? Hm… If I were a bit more cynical I would almost suspect that the study is intended to point out the obvious, and that they’re doing this purely for PR reasons. Especially since the games mentioned are - wait for it - Bejeweled 2, Peggle and Bookworm Adventures. But that couldn’t be the case, could it?

Also, I really don’t think there’s enough data present in the press release or in the slides accompanying it. It’s little things, like the following snippet:

In all cases, the changes in stress levels and mood were measured in comparison to a control group that experienced a Web-based activity similar in physical and mental nature to the game-playing groups.

Exactly what Web-based activity was this? And how can they assert that it’s similar in physical and mental nature? A similar mental nature would be something intended to stimulate positively, like…um…a game. Which would mean that they played a web game instead of a downloadable game? And how exactly are they confirming that the physical natures are the same? Playing a game is a much more involved experience for me than just, for example, browsing the net; even if they per definition both involve moving the mouse and sitting on my ass, the physical experiences are subtly different.

But seriously, the study was interesting and confirmed my intuitive belief that games help me relax. And there’s probably loads more information in the actual paper for those who wish to check up details about the study. That wouldn’t be me, though – I prefer to complain.

Either way, go casual games for making us all relaxed and happy! Now I feel like playing some Magic Farm.

Lately all of my updates have been about Spandex Force. Trust me, I could write a ton more on what’s happening with the game but today I’m just going to give you a quick link: Check out the Encyclopedia of Life project!

It’s an amazing attempt to catalogue the 1,8 million know species on the planet…and to add new ones as they are discovered. Here are some example pages of how it will look. There are two things that immediately strike me about this:

1. This looks like a lot of fun. Seriously, it looks awesome! I’ve mentioned my fascination with Wikipedia and how I can look up esoteric topics for hours on end…and I can definitely see myself doing the same on this site. As a kid I used to read books about nature, and I spent countless days browsing my mom’s library of books on sharks and reptiles and mammals and fungi and whatnot. This site will probably be the same for the next generation of nerds.
2. Listening to the-end-is-nigh environmentalists you get the impression that the world will end in a few decades. I googled for “extinct species per year” just now and found a page that claimed that 30000 species become extinct per year. I have no idea if that figure is correct, but if it is, negative people are probably saying things like “there’ll be no species left in 60 years!” Of course, they’re probably missing the fact that new species also emerge constantly. Either way, the thing is that if species are dropping and emerging at that rate, then it’ll be rather difficult to maintain this collection of species. 30000 per year means that someone will have to write a big red “EXTINCT” on 82 pages per day. I’m guessing that the 30000 species per year is either wildly exaggerated…or that the 1,8 million named species mentioned on EOL refer to a relatively stable core of species. Hey, I have no idea how many non-named species there are, after all!

Oh, and buy Spandex Force unless you’ve already done so! If you have you’ll be getting an update soonish; testing is still in progress.

Mathematics is not one of my strengths; if I put my mind to it I can get by,  but I lack the discipline to become skilled at it. I’ve read some calculus and algebra and combinatorics and statistics and whatnot, but in general I’ve just taken some courses only to forget everything I’ve learned shortly afterwards. The only maths I use regularly, except for simple arithmetic, is trigonometry. (It’s quite useful for 2D games.)

Logic is a completely different matter though. My job as a software developer at a Large Multi-National Corporation(TM) demands that I keep many of my skills sharp: the ability to juggle many ideas and projects, the ability to deal professionally and courteously with customers, and the ability to drink copious amounts of tea. Oh, and let’s not forget the ability to actually write code. Many non-programmers seem to think that maths is necessary for programmers, but in reality it’s logic that’s in high demand.

Speaking of skills at work, another thing that I tend to do there is solve sudokus. I find great comfort in spending my lunch breaks listening to the ongoing conversations while I solve a sudoku and – if something interesting pops up – add something to the discussion. Solving a sudoku is relaxing; you know that it’s solvable as long as you apply some logic, so you can take your mind off the possibly-unsolvable problems facing you in real life. At one time I did many sudokus per day, but now I limit myself to at most one for the sheer pleasure of it. A friend of mine mentioned that sudokus can be used to measure stress as well: if you find yourself taking too long on a standard sudoku, it might be an indication that you’re too stressed to think straight at the moment. True enough, but I find that if I’m too excited about something it also makes it hard to concentrate on the problem at hand. But then again, I suppose that that could be classed as stress as well, albeit of the positive kind.

Incidentally, speaking of sudokus, did you know that Benjamin Franklin used to amuse himself with mathematical puzzles similar in principle to sudokus when he was not busying himself with inventing just about everything you could imagine? Read the article and be amazed at the 16-by-16 magic square with bent rows that Franklin devised. You know about the magic square, where each line has to add up to 15? This is a magic square where each line has to add up to 2056. And all the coloured areas also have to add up to 2056. I’m just shaking my head at the complexity of the puzzle.

Read the article above to see more puzzles.

At one time I was pondering if I could devise a meta-puzzle game, where each puzzle mechanism would be unique, and one part of the problem would actually be to figure out the rules themselves. I started examining the sudoku to get inspiration, and quickly decided that it’s above my current skill to actually bring that idea to life. The idea is seductively simple: create a formal definition of the sudoku, and then expand that definition to encompass other mathematical puzzles. After you have created a suitable grammar of mathematics puzzles, you simply create a generator for new exciting puzzles. But in reality, this is much too complex for a layman in mathematics.

However, after having read about Franklin’s exploits in the puzzle domain, I wonder if this would have been something he would have enjoyed to create.

This has to bee the coolest thing ever: a cloned pig has had its genes altered to make it glow fluorescently green! And the fun doesn’t stop there – the manipulated pig has also bred piglets that also glow in the dark. In other words, the specialized genes have been transferred to the next generation without any external intervention.

Robin Lovell-Badge, a genetics expert at Britain’s National Institute for Medical Research, thinks that this technology could potentially be very valuable for growing organs for transplants. Personally I couldn’t care less about that: I’m just waiting for the day we get glowing pork chops! Think of the fun!

Speaking of genetic manipulation I’ll have to mention my new game project, with the working title Wildhollow: in the game you’ll get to combine mad scientist desires with cute fluffy animals. The design isn’t done yet, but the current vision is that you’ve inherited a farm and your task is to bring the farm around from near-bancrupcy. How? By breeding animals; and in particular, by cross-breeding animals and applying mutagens to create new types of beasts!

Of course… The game won’t mention either the word genetics or mutation. It’ll all be covered up by politically correct terms like “breed your animals and discover strange new creatures.”

Stay tuned for more information next month; first I have to complete Spandex Force!

This weekend I saw a 2006 movie called The Black Hole. It stars no one I have ever heard of, the acting was appalling, and it had one of the worst storylines I have ever had the misfortune to endure. The IMDB rating is 3.1, but despite all my negative comments I think they’re a little bit harsh on the poor flick: it was entertaining after all!

First, let’s go through some basic physics. A black hole is a point in space where the gravitational field is so dense that nothing can escape it. Not even electromagnetic radiation such as light. So far so good – the movie described black holes pretty well, and even fit in a nice comment about why they’re called black holes. (Hint: see the previous sentence.) But then things got worse. Let’s see if I can offer a brief synopsis of the movie.

An experiment in a particle accelerator in St. Louis results in the unfortunate creation of a microscopic black hole. From this black hole, an energy-eating creature emerges and starts to gobble up all our precious electricity. Meanwhile, the black hole starts to consume first the research facility, and then most of the city. For no apparent reason the President decides that a nuclear strike will make things better, despite what an expert on black holes says. Aforementioned expert presents his theory that the energy creature is connected to the black hole, and that if the creature is sent back through the hole, both of them will disappear. After some difficulty this is exactly what’s done…and all ends well.

Oookay. Now… Let’s see where to begin.

The movie mentions that in 1999 scientists foolishly disregarded the possibility of a black hole’s creation. This refers to the disaster scenarios presented before building the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, in which they summarize the threat with the following comment:

We conclude that there are no credible mechanisms for catastrophic scenarios at RHIC

Those foolish scientists! Don’t they see the dangers of microscopic black holes, prophecied by the movie?! Well, no. As far as I know, black holes aren’t stable while they’re small; it’s speculated that they leak Hawking radiation, and if the black hole is smaller than, say, a great mountain chances are it will evaporate with time.

Then we have the small detail of the energy creature emerging from the black hole. Dude. The movie’s plot would be completely acceptable if it just contained the black hole! It would have been a more decent disaster movie, and it wouldn’t have flaunted its ignorance like it does now. Why not leave it at a black hole? Why invent an energy creature that shouldn’t be able to travel through black holes (since…well…nothing escapes)? And why invent some story about closing the hole by shoving the creature back through it. What the hell? If we accept the idea that the creature consists of some Mystical Energy(TM) that’s unknown to us, and that the presence of that energy can neutralize the gravity field of a black hole, then why in the lower blazes didn’t the black hole get neutralized when the creature passed through the first time? I could have accepted some strange speculation about Mystical Energy, and how the creation of a black hole results in the creation of this Mystical Energy Creature and it’s gravity-neutralizing effects…but the scientist in the movie mentions how the creature travels through black holes to new parts of time and space in order to eat more energy.

(But of course, if we start to accept Mystical Energy creatures, we must start to accept other strange possibilities. Like, maybe they can be Mystically Positive or Mystically Negative, and when they’re positive they can generate black holes, and when they’re negative they close them. The act of travelling through the hole would then cause the Mystical Energy creature to switch polarity. So… Let’s just disregard the whole Mystical Energy idea completely.)

Watching The Black Hole is a little surreal. It not only contains (*cough*) questionable science, but the acting, the script, and the rest of the movie makes just as little sense. Why would anyone suggest deploying nuclear weapons against a black hole? What would they hope to achieve? I would assume that even a little kid knows what a black hole is – not to mention the President of the USA and his generals!

Still, despite all its bad points, the movie was strangely amusing and entertaining. And it does bring up some interesting things: the script writers were familiar with the debate about the RHIC, and when they designed a creature they chose an energy being…which is the only reasonable choice, since all matter would have gotten torn apart by the gravity of the black hole. Sure, energy can’t escape either, but given the choice between “look, a warrior serpent emerged intact from the black hole” and “look, a weird energy life form emerged” I choose the latter. Still, it would have been nice if the script writers had chosen a subject closer at hand. This is the dangers of possessing just a little knowledge: if you don’t know anything about a subject you probably wouldn’t take the task upon you, but if you have a little knowledge you arrogantly believe that you know enough to get the work done.

(Disclaimer: I’m a programmer, not a physicist. Nothing said above is guaranteed to contain a shred of truth. I hope the irony is quite visible for everyone.)

I’m often disappointed by technology. The year is 2007 and there are no cyborgs, no anti-gravity devices, no colonization of the Moon, no food pills and no household robots worth mentioning. But one thing does give me hope for the future: technologies involving induction! This has to be the coolest thing ever.

Induction itself is quite simple: it’s a law that describes the connection between the strength of a magnetic field, a conductor (such as a piece of metal), the conductor’s movement speed, and the resulting voltage in the conductor. Essentially, voltage and magnetic fields are connected…and one can be used to generate the other. I assume that everyone’s familiar with the electromagnet and how electricity can generate a magnetic field, but the cool thing about induction is that the reverse is also possible.

One application that’s come up recently is recharging batteries through induction; it’s been all over the news lately, how (induction-prepared) cell phone batteries can be recharged by simply placing the phone on a special pad, and it’s been rumored that Apple will use induction for certain products. And here’s a Taiwanese patent for a device that can recharge normal batteries through induction. But there’s more to induction than this!

One thing I had never heard about until today was induction cooking. It’s really quite clever: a magnetic field interacts with a conductor (a cooking pan or somesuch), and because there’s electrical resistance in the conductor the current is converted to heat. No need to transfer the heat through a coil or by heating with gas – the cooking pan itself is heated from the magnetic field! Cleaner, faster, and more efficient. Also less dangerous, since you won’t be able to burn your hand on the stove anymore. Is there no downside to this at all?! No, not really. But try telling that to the uncouth masses.

“A great big magnetic field in my kitchen?! No way! Who knows what it’ll do to me!”

It’ll make your life better, that’s what. Here’s a summary of test results concerning the dangers of radiation involved with inductive cooking. See anything there along the lines of “will cause dangerous mutations and spleen ruptures”? Nope, nothing at all. (Though to be honest, cancer is always a possibility. But then, just about everything can cause cancer.)

I think most people suffer from a belief that electromagnetic radiation is something strange and weird and sciency. It’s not. It’s pretty dull and common, in fact. I leave you with a quote from Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics’ review of The Core:

[...] humanity is doomed and will end in a few months. The cause? Deadly microwave radiation will cook us since we’ll no longer be shielded by the Earth’s magnetic force field or what Keyes refers to as “Earth’s electro-magnetic energy field”.

Keyes proceeds to demonstrate the effects of losing the magnetic field by lighting the aerosol from a can of hair spray and flaming a peach representing Earth. He makes his explanation simplistic since he’s talking to military brass who can’t grasp complexity, even though they lead one of the most complex and high tech organizations in the world.

Not only does Keyes not know the difference between forces and energy but he apparently believes that electromagnetic radiation such as microwaves can be deflected by a magnetic field. Here’s a quick experiment, try using a magnet to deflect the electromagnetic (EM) radiation emitted by a flashlight. The EM radiation is a beam of visible light and, although we hate to spoil the experiment, nothing will happen.

We have the technology; we can make them stronger, faster…homosexual. What on earth am I babbling about? Read this article and get back to me afterwards. Or if you want instant gratification (or at least instant information) here are a few quotes:

The line between male and female just got blurrier. New research with mice indicates that both sexes have male gender circuitry in their brains. What makes females act like females, according to the study, is the ability to turn off this circuitry. [...] The findings challenge widely held theories about the nature of sexual identity. Many researchers believe that hormones shape the brain’s gender circuitry during development. But the current study indicates that the female brain may be wired the same way as the male brain and that some mice disable this wiring to become female.

I find this amazingly interesting for several reasons. First of all, this goes against the intuitive feeling that the default gender is female. (Since XX chromosomes are female and XY are male. Somehow the homogametic structure of the female gender feels more “orderly” – more intuitive.) But this study shows that such assumptions are ridiculous and rooted in superstition rather than genetics; gender is a very complex thing, and inter-gender relations even more so. One can’t really talk about default genders in a species that requires both for procreation.

Secondly, I’ve just finished a Teaching Company audio book on Neurobiology, and one of the things the lecturer brought up was ridiculous initial attempts to explain homosexuality. He finished his lecture by commenting that it’s very likely that scientists will discover the real neurological reason for homosexuality within a few years. Guess he was right! (Or at least, they’re on their way to finding out – the study above is in no way a definite answer to anything.)

…But the TTC lecturer also mentioned something more interesting: the consequences of such a discovery. He started with analysis; once brain scanning methods are improved we might be able to know if a person is homosexual or heterosexual merely by analysing the brain. Do we want to know if a baby is hetero or homo? And what about people who are happily married, thinking that they’re hetero – what will they do once they discover that they’re really standing way back in the closet? “Ohhh, this explains why I have a hard time getting it up, honey! So… Eh… What now? And what about our fifteen kids?”

Of course, the next step is to modify this behaviour. Sure, we can make lesbians…but we can also “cure” homosexuals. That opens up a whole bag of nasty business. The lecturer went on to – as people always tend to do, to drive the point home – make a Nazi reference, which was completely unwarranted and irrelevant. But the main point is very solid: what will happen if people can choose to be hetero or homo?

“Don’t be ridiculous. People won’t be able to choose that! In the study they genetically modified mice to lose the TRPC2 gene – we can’t do that on a grown person. In best case, it could just be done on an embryo,” is a very good retort to that. But I can bet you [insert a huge amount of bandoolas here] that if this study proves to be correct and relevant for human sexuality, then there will eventually come ways to artificially create the effect of the TRPC2 gene…or block it.

Sorry for the misleading title – this won’t be a deep look into AI models, and neither will it link to any brilliant new papers concerning AI architecture. There will also be no diagrams and no pseudo source code. All you’re getting is a musing on differences between the academic and the commercial world. I’m sure you’ve read countless of articles about that issue already, but I have something new: I have anecdotal evidence to spice things up! Cue the crowd’s cheer.

The time: February 3, noonish.
The place: A stinky bus full of tired and half-drunk travellers going from France to Sweden; at this time the bus happened to be located in Denmark, but that’s highly irrelevant.
The cast: A mix of people who have studied Computer Science but ended up on different routes in life: a PhD student/consultant, a PhD student/biologist, a programmer, and a beer-swilling bastard. I only added the last bit for the amusing alliteration, but I’m sure you can guess whom I’m referring to. The main point is that two chose a rather more academic route than the other two.

I had brought along the latest (or by now old) issue of Game Developer on the journey, as some light reading compared to Michael Moorcock’s Wizardry and Wild Romance: A Study of Epic Fantasy. No, the light reading part wasn’t ironic at all – Moorcock’s book is excellent and he is totally dripping with wit, but the constantly changing writing styles (since he quotes different authors) makes it a non-trivial read for a poor Swede. Either way, in the Game Developer mag there was an article about AI models for games, and one of the more academic persons happened to browse through said article. I’ll make an attempt to describe an exchange of words that occurred around this time:

“So, was there anything worthwhile in the magazine?”
“Nah, not really. Interesting to read about the AI model, though. They’re acting like this is the next big thing in game development research, but it’s really just a simplified version of subsumption architecture. It’s been common knowledge in AI research since the 80s!”

I was pretty sceptical at this reaction. Sure, game developers don’t really keep up with academic research, but there had to be something new! Unfortunately I hadn’t – and still haven’t – read the article, so I can’t say anything for sure. The argument briefly touched the notion of game developers being result-centered and academics focusing on demos and theory rather than practical applications. I advocated this viewpoint, but I was met with arguments that the dude’s PhD work had included active attempts to develop AI models that could be practically used in games, and that he had worked together with industry representatives on this matter.

Then we arrived at the ferry from Denmark to Sweden, and had to get off the bus; so the discussion stopped.

I remain slightly sceptical, though. I have a nagging gut feeling that the viewpoints of a game developer and a person with a more thorough academic background simply are too separate to merge that easily. I’m convinced that said PhD student acheived excellent results that would be practically useful in game development…but I’m also convinced that despite all his efforts, all that it has resulted in is a demo; a proof of concept. An academic proof of concept that can be used for homebrew development, but probably won’t get incorporated into commercial game development projects.

I also have a nagging feeling that the PhD student in question focuses on potential. He sees what his projects can evolve into – he sees the possibilities for evolution that a good, solid theoretical foundation has. But I also suspect that a commercially-inclined game developer would only look at the actual output. If the AI he beheld didn’t produce effects that were wildly superior to existing simpler models, he probably wouldn’t care much for the potential in the project. This might be due to a lack of understanding of the potential, or simply a sound business sense since old-fashioned methods are cheaper and yield good profits either way.

Of course, this is a vague generalization. There are exceptions in both academia and commercial game production, and I have no data to support my claims in any way. All I have is this gut feeling. It would be very interesting to dig up a bunch of academic AI projects and interview professional game developers about their spontaneous opinions on what these projects could be used for.

All names have been omitted from this article to protect the innocent. Me, that is, because Peter would do harmful things to me for paraphrasing his words incorrectly.

Oh, damn!

I often get my blog topics from things that pop up in everyday discussions – amusing links, interesting comments and so forth. Basically, my originality and innovativity is sometimes lower than pre-teen humour; and today is no exception. There are two reasons for this blog entry’s existence: my picky taste, and a link to a Tasteline article. Don’t bother going there unless you know Swedish, though.

Say hello to Mr. Umami – the complex and elusive “fifth” flavour, which accompanies the four primary flavours of sweet, salty, sour and bitter. As this article explains, umami was discovered thousands of years ago and is used extensively in Asian cooking. It adds a depth of flavour which apparently brings out all the tastes present, unlike Western cuisine which concentrantes on fat as a flavour enhancer in order to bring out specific tastes.

So, where’s the beef? We’ll get to the literal beef later; in the mean time, here’s the interesting part: I’m a very picky eater. In some ways I’m an omnivore – I can eat half-spoiled food, I can eat burnt food, and so on. But there are many foods I either refuse to eat or choose not to eat, and among those are mushrooms, fish, shellfish, mashed potatoes, most types of cheese, vegetables like broccoli and some cabbages, and much more. I’m very selective with my food, but I don’t really view it as being spoiled. Not really. Spoiled implies (in my opinion) that one receives alternatives; if I’m faced with foods like this I prefer to simply go hungry. Maybe that’s just some weird masochistic tendency to punish myself for being spoiled though – who knows. But guess what? Most of the foodstuffs above contain large amounts of umami, according to the article above. Maybe there’s a connection?

Umami is the hip new word for something more common: glutamate, or glutamic acid. Apparently, there are three nucleotides that contribute most to the umami taste: inosinate, guanylate and, to a lesser degree, adenylate. According to this list, it seems that many of the foods above contain large amounts of glutamate, but also things I do like such as beef, pork, chicken, tomatoes and carrots. Maybe I’m just picky after all?

I have three different theories concerning this:

1. Adenylate is abundant in fish and shellfish, and guanylate is abundant in plants; it might be possible that I have some sort of sensitivity toward these particular nucleotides.
2. As you can read in the article mentioned in the second paragraph, umami can act in several ways: flavour partner, flavour balancer, flavour catalyst and flavour layerer. It might be possible that certain uses of umami simply does not work for me. Balancing or layering the tastes might be okay, but bringing out new flavours might be a complete no-no to my tastebuds.
3. I’m a spoiled bastard who’s trying to avoid responsibility.

In all probability it’s a combination of all three options.

Are you depressed? Do you feel that the world is a big scary place? Do you feel like you’re not in control of your life? Be thankful for that – compared to cheery and positive people, you might be better at making correct analyses!

Karl Ask, a Ph.D. student at the University of Gothenburg, has written a doctoral dissertation called Criminal investigation: Motivation, emotion and cognition in the processing of evidence, in which he claims that criminal investigators who are depressed and slightly unstable are much better at making correct analyses. I couldn’t find the whole dissertation, but here’s an abstract at least.

According to his results, criminal investigators who are happy or angry are the ones making the worst analyses; they are too focused and secure in their feelings, and turn a blind eye to new information. Depressed and frightened criminal investigators were the ones who performed best, since they feel like they aren’t in control of the situation. Thus they need to be open-minded and take in new information.

I’d like to make a short addition here: personally, I’m convinced that intelligent people generally feel worse than others. I believe they are more often stressed and depressed and feel bad about themselves. If that is correct, then there just might be a possibility that the smarter criminal investigators are the ones who’re also depressed. It would be interesting to compare the dissertation performances with various other tests – for example IQ tests. (No, IQ is not equal to intelligence. I know that, and you know that. But it’s one way of measuring something at least.)

Either way, after this it’s not a long hop from criminal investigation to problem solving in other areas. It just might be possible that the depressed people are better coders, for example. Or better at forming a good business plan.

This leads to an interesting view of a company. I like to divide the people into three areas: the people who implement things, the middle-management people and finally the top managers. Implementing good solutions often require skills as well as logical abilities and creativity. Managing a company at the top level requires a lot of things, most of which I can only speculate; forming business plans, dealing with other managers, handling publicity and so on. That would seem to also require a person with a lot of creativity, who can analyse situations correctly.

Then there’s middle-management; no company could do without them, but do they really need to be creative? I imagine that implementation people would rather have less creativity from their bosses, and I also imagine that the bosses’ bosses would rather have their underlings perform their tasks like planned.

In other words: let the common workers be depressed and unhappy, push the optimistic and cheery people into middle-management, and let the depressed but charismatic people be the company managers!

Wait a second. Isn’t that how it is already? I wonder if that could be seen as some kind of evidence for the theory.