Leon Atkinson's Blog, page 6

The “I Eat Poo” Game

Seems like you’d need to be drunk or young or both to play this, but it does illustrate a game mechanic I like. That is the hidden wager mechanic. In games played around a table, it keeps everyone engaged and prevents those lulls where one player is deep in thought while the other players might get bored.

I Eat Poo — Jeremy — Medium

Earlier this evening, @danfuzz told me that some of his friends were playing a game called “Tweet or Twenty” in which everyone around a table selects a Cards Against Humanity white card and either must post the content to their Twitter account or pay $20 into a pot. The idea is that if the card is too embarrassing, you’d rather pay than have to post it.

I thought this was a fun idea until I realized that since (a) the posts all contained “#TweetOrTwenty”, and (b) a more-or-less complete list of Cards Against Humanity cards is readily available, embarrassment is limited because it’s easy to tell when someone is playing and therefore when their post is not to be taken at face value. So I started thinking of ways to remove this limitation.

Automated unit tests from Asis

This tool allows you to periodically grab stack traces and record calls to a library that are then saved as unit tests. It’s a shortcut to getting coverage for a library that’s already in production and stable.

zavg/Asis · GitHub

Asis – Tool to deal efficiently with legacy code through creating and running characterization tests automatically.

The main idea is the following: while user or tester is using your product (for example, Web site) the Asis tool records the function calls which are performed, the sets of arguments which are passed to the function and the received output. Output can be any, starting from strings, integers, HTML, JSON and finishing with serialized objects with complex internal structure. We don’t care what we receive – we just record it and approve as correct result, because we know that we are working with the stable release version.

Psychology Links

Here’ are some links to articles about psychology that caught my interest in the past several months.

For Depression, Prescribing Exercise Before Medication – Olga Khazan – The Atlantic

Aerobic activity has shown to be an effective treatment for many forms of depression. So why are so many people still on antidepressants?

Why People Work For Rewards They’ll Never Get to Enjoy | Hazlitt

Why do rich people work so much?

The quick, glib answer is that hard work is what made them rich in the first place. But then, why keep grinding away? At what point does it make sense to stop accumulating riches and start enjoying them? Are we even capable of knowing when enough is enough?

Rethinking schizophrenia: Taming demons without drugs – health – 06 February 2014 – New Scientist

Antipsychotic drugs may do more harm than good. The tide is turning towards gentler methods, from talking therapies to brain training

The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder – NYTimes.com

Diagnoses have soared as makers of the drugs used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have found success with a two-decade marketing campaign.

BBC News – How much can an extra hour’s sleep change you?

The average Briton gets six-and-a-half hours’ sleep a night, according to the Sleep Council. Michael Mosley took part in an unusual experiment to see if this is enough.

Homeschooling Links

I’m sitting on a pile of links I intended to share going back to September when I got really busy. Here are some I saved related to homeschooling and education. We kept Tre home this school year and a few months later took Henry out of public school. So far, it’s working out well, though there are definitely challenges.

My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me – Atlantic Mobile

What happens when a father, alarmed by his 13-year-old daughter’s nightly workload, tries to do her homework for a week

200 Free Kids Educational Resources: Lessons, Apps, Books, Websites… | Open Culture

Get free K-12 video lessons; mobile apps; audiobooks, ebooks and textbooks; foreign language lessons; test prep materials; and web resources!

Teach kids programming — Medium

I’ve been gathering the best resources to teach children & teens programming?—?books, environments, apps, courseware and games.

These resources are meant for teachers and parents who want to have their children fall in love with computers and see the magic of programming.

Homeschooled: How American Homeschoolers Measure Up

A look at the history, performance and outcomes of the American homeschooling movement.

Report: Attendance Crisis in California, Martinez USD Truancy Rate Higher Than Statewide Number – Schools – Martinez, CA Patch

Contra Costa is one of nine counties statewide with an elementary school truancy rate greater than 25 percent, according to a new report by the state Attorney General.

4 Free Websites Where You Can Learn The Basics Of Game Development

Over a decade ago, I taught myself the basics of game programming and game development through the limited tutorial resources I could find on the Internet. Since then, the landscape of game development has changed drastically, and anyone can start creating their own games within weeks with a few Google searches. But let’s say you want to start developing your own games but don’t know where to start. Where do you go?

Free Lessons from the James Randi Educational Foundation

These look to be great resources for fellow homeschoolers.

New “JREF in The Classroom” Lessons!

The James Randi Educational Foundation is pleased to announce the release of four new additions to our JREF in the Classroom offerings:

Pareidolia: Do You See What You Think You See?
 Illusions: Our Visual System
 Cognition: Are You Rational?
 Power Balance: Sports Enhancement, or Placebo?

These are downloadable lesson plans for use in high school and junior high school science and psychology classes that use topics in pseudoscience and the paranormal to teach critical thinking, skepticism, and scientific inquiry. Each lesson is designed to expose students to concepts identified in the National Science Content Standards and AAAS science literacy benchmarks.

Pettibon Interviewed by The Guardian

Some truths are only safely speakable as art.

Raymond Pettibon: punk with a pencil | Art and design | The Guardian

His artwork for Black Flag and Sonic Youth helped define the punk aesthetic. Now he’s taking aim at the US government

Neuroscientist’s Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath

The evidence mounts for an epigenetic path that connects violence experienced in childhood with violence perpetrated as an adult. This is the the main conclusion of Molyneux’s Bomb in the Brain series. Want to feel like a hero who saves the world? Practice peace towards all children.

Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath – Judith Ohikuare – The Atlantic

Neuroscientist James Fallon discovered through his work that he has the brain of a psychopath, and subsequently learned a lot about the role of genes in personality and how his brain affects his life.

Meditation Effective Treatment for Depression

Here’s a good summary of a study in JAMA about the usefulness of mediation. Remember how I pointed to the release from Sam Harris of some guided meditations? Since then, my family has been spotty about practicing, but we’ll keep at it because I really want my kids to learn this essential life skill.

Meditation is an Effective Treatment for Depression, Anxiety and Pain | PsyBlog – Understand Your Mind

Data from 47 different clinical trials finds meditation is as effective as antidepressants.

Unregulated dinner parties

This happened to me just tonight! My wife prepared dinner for the family, and although she has taken cooking classes in the past, I don’t think any government official ever issued her a license. Help! Help! Does anyone have a license for determining if I might suffer adverse health effects? I’d do it myself, but I’ve let my thinking license expire. Oh, man, I hope I’m not breaking some law by just asking for help.

New York City Overwhelmed by Scourge of Illegal, Underground Dinner Parties

Folks in the Big Apple are illegally eating things! The CBS affiliate in New York City today uncovered the scary, secret world of illegal, underground dinner parties.

No, this is not a joke or a parody, though it will really feel like one for the first few seconds of the clip. The news casters treat this situation with the same slightly amazed and shocked tone that they use when they cover the “underground world of raves.” You know which story I’m talking about. Every local news affiliate runs one every sweeps period.

Half-life city scanner drops in on German chancellor

I’ve just finished playing through all the single-player Half-Life content, which offers a deeply dystopian world littered with hoving drones called City Scanners. Sounds like they are real now. How long until something like HL2′s Manhacks are flying around after “criminals”?

German chancellor’s drone “attack” shows the threat of weaponized UAVs | Ars Technica

At a campaign rally in Dresden on September 15, a small quadrocopter flew within feet of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere, hovering briefly in front of them before crashing into the stage practically at Merkel’s feet. Merkel appeared to be amused by the “drone attack,” but de Maiziere and others on the stage seemed a bit more unsettled by the robo-kamikaze.