Zero Angel Richardson's Blog, page 11

Check Out: Old Man's War by John Scalzi

Old Man's War by John Scalzi is the series that made Scalzi. He published his book online free and asked readers to send him money if they liked it. It worked and he got a successful deal with Tor.



The premise is that old people on Earth are allowed a second life in space . . . if they sign up for a 10 year stint with the military.

It's well written and exciting, but if anything it may be a bit too focused. All three books in the series proper (Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony) are that way.

Since the main character in Book 1 and 3 starts out as a private and promotions and assignments are seemingly out of his control or desire, these are very much stories of him making do. There's no epic-ness I guess, even though there's the hint of it throughout. It could very easily be about interstellar war, and Book 3 starts to offer hints of the characters actually beginning to take defining roles in the big picture.

There are two additional sequels. Book 4 states that it is a retelling of Book 3 from a different perspective (which sounds interesting, but not something I would spend money on at the moment) and Book 5, The Human Division, is Scalzi's foray into writing a serial. Again, interesting, but still new so a bit too expensive. Also, there's no promise that it continues with the characters that you want the story to continue with. He's sold me on John, Jane, and even Zoe as characters to care about, but I'm not willing to invest in further entries without guarantee of them taking even more prominent roles in the series. As a serial, each entry/chapter is, not necessarily stand-alone, but well, written like a serial. So I'll abstain until either the price comes down or my luxury budget goes up.

If you're a fan of sci-fi, you've probably already read these books, but I encourage you to check out the first three if you haven't already. Eminently readable, I finished two books seemingly immediately, completely overtaking my sleep cycle, and caved and bought the third the next day.

Thanks for reading!



So have you read Old Man's War or other books by Scalzi? What do you think? Comment below.

Make it better: Hyrule Warriors

© Nintendo
I've been a fan of Dynasty Warriors for years. I got my start with the franchise in Romance of the Three Kingdoms 3 for the SNES. So I leapt at the chance to play one of my favorites with the cast of one of my favorites. I mean, I have two Zelda tattoos for crying out loud (Triforce and three-and-a-half hearts if you're curious).

And as predicted, it's super-fun and addictive. But no one is clamoring for it to be named game of the year or even talking about it as more than filler between main adventures. So here is a list of things they could have done (or could do in an expansion/sequel). Some are more feasible than others and I really don't think would require much in the way of programming while others are more of a wish list:


I imagine that it is possible that there is individual code written for every single event in Hyrule Warriors, but what makes more sense is to have code written that allows the game to control units, and sends units to different areas based on X happening. If that is the case, then other than writing the interface, it's just a matter of making X happening being a player choosing X.

This should be an optional facet of the game (for stages that aren't commander challenges) and maybe wouldn't be part of the main storyline battles (see Consequences point).

Viewpoints

When the first DLC was announced and it was revealed you could play as Cia, Wizzro, and Volga, I was thrilled because one of my favorite things to do in the old Dynasty Warriors games was to play battlefields from different sides and different characters.

So long as the character you were playing was a character on the battlefield, then you played from their starting point, on their side, and the game was set up to have semi-unique experiences from each side and depending on what happened in certain battles.

Now, I understand that we have to rely on writers for Zelda instead of a piece of classical literature, but it seems like this was very underdeveloped. For most battles, you only have the option to play as one or two different characters and what they do plays out practically exactly the same no matter what.

Playing the Yellow Turban rebellion from the side of the Yellow Turbans remains one of the standout experiences of Dynasty Warriors in my opinion. Here you have the standard first battle of every Dynasty Warriors/Romance of the Three Kingdoms game that is ridiculously easy as first stages are required to be, but then you play on the other side and all of a sudden the fact that EVERY SINGLE ELITE CHARACTER IN THE GAME IS ON THE OPPOSING SIDE freaking matters to you. The characters that made it so you could pretty much stand there and have your side win now make it so that if you don't destroy them as quickly as possible, they will annihilate everyone in their path. There was nothing like that in Hyrule Warriors.

Playing as Ganondorf or Cia meant stages designed entirely for them and not playing the opposing side. It was a welcome surprise to have new stages in Legend Mode for Cia, but it wasn't something that I was expecting. I would have rather fought the original stages from the side of the bad guys.

Consequences

This one is for the main storyline and probably wouldn't happen for this particular iteration of the game as it's a bit too late to be feasible or cost effective, but it makes sense, especially with how very heavily scripted every stage in Hyrule Warriors was.

In different stages, things happen, those things should affect future stages. Maybe if you are bad enough or slow enough that Impa is forced to retreat, then she's injured for the next few battles or killed for the remainder of the stages. Maybe you can lose a stage and be pushed back to a different stage and have to fight back through a different route. One thing I found absurd playing through the game was (very, very minor spoiler), in the first stage King Dodongo breaks through walls of keeps; if you don't stop him, he continues to advance.

Apparently, the game expected you to have him advance at least as far as the second keep because in the last stage that wall has been repaired and you use the fact that King Dodongo broke through it to break through it yourself. When I played that stage and Darunia said, "I think King Dodongo broke through here," I went, "WTF?" because that had never happened to me and didn't happen until I played the first stage on Hero difficulty.

If consequences were a thing though (such as losing, winning super awesomely, injuries and deaths to characters, foiling plans, plans coming to fruition), then instead of a mostly linear Legend Mode, you'd have a spiderweb of stages subtly different and with your actions actually having an impact on the events that occur. THEN you could have multiple endings! Maybe you stop Ganondorf so hard that he never has time to consolidate his power base or return to power? Maybe you prevent Cia from opening the portals in time in the first place? Maybe Lana becomes evil or Link succumbs to the Dark Links? Maybe Sheik never reveals her identity or Zant overthrows Midna?

Tons of possibilities that could have been explored in a non-canon game like this but never were.

Customization

This is relatively minor, but you should have more choices both when it comes to color schemes (besides just unlocking preset ones in the Master Quest), costumes and other superficial things, as well as to some extent the moves of your character. If you could at least mix-and-match which combo triggers after which button press, then you could make every character your favorite character. I love path clearing combo finishers, so Link's final combo is awesome, but I sure wish I could switch Fi's out for her path-clearing third combo.

Watching the actions of enemies, you notice that certain moves are reused (the Darknut throwing a boomerang exactly like Link comes to mind), so then this implies that the animation move is independent of character model. Does this mean that it would be relatively straightforward to swap out moves? I'm not saying all moves should be swappable, and I can understand having to unlock stuff like this, but it sure seems like it is feasible and should have been included with the Day 1 patch.

Not being able to delete skills from weapons (or add slots), maximum of 10 weapons per character, and other arbitrary constraints really feels like a needless reason to grind at end-game for the power-obsessed players and not something that adds fun to the game. I'm not saying it should be easy to add slots or delete skills, but players shouldn't be beholden to blind luck to get that ultimate weapon for their favorite character.



I really think that if Nintendo and Koei would have gone this route that Hyrule Warriors would have been heralded as a great Zelda game instead of as just mindless fun suitable as a stopgap between main franchise installments.

Thanks for reading. Do you agree with my list of improvements? Have some of your own? What are your thoughts on Hyrule Warriors? Comment below.

Thoughts on . . . Football

To say that football and I have a tumultuous relationship would be an understatement to say the least.
I'm not going to get into that, but I am going to get into the point of football.

If you press parents enough, I feel like most would feed you some bullshit about learning sportsmanship instead of some post-apocalyptic inter-town blood sport that children participate in.

I heard today that the NFL has officially stated they know that 1 in 3 players will have brain damage of some kind by the time they retire.

I'm not sure that I had ever been so invested in a Super Bowl before. It's just not in me to root so strongly, even for my favorite teams; I've always said that rooting for a team is somewhat akin to rooting for the mercenaries during the Crusades. Your favorite players may be good people and may even have some passing loyalty to the team and your town, as much as any employee of pretty good job does anyway, but what is keeping them there is the paycheck. So no matter how I may get caught up when I see my teams do something awesome, sports in general has always been about watching feats of athleticism more than anything.

In high school I bought into the propaganda hardcore. I believed in the team, sportsmanship, leadership, everything, and when I found out that I was, for all intents and purposes, believing in a lie designed to have children put playing football and winning above their own safety, health, and more, well, it ranks right up there with the all-time greatest betrayals of my life.

And I guess the last few weeks have shown me that I still feel that way to a certain extent. Because I fucking hate cheaters.

And when it's become as systemic and regular as the New England Patriots have exploited, it's a corruption that is the epitome of what football really is about.

The Patriots winning the Super Bowl is a message to children across the country that cheating is OK.

How long have the Patriots been cheating? How many years were they cheating by getting the calls of the other teams before they were caught? How many years have they been playing with underinflated balls? There's a report going around that since 2007 their fumbles dropped to 1 in 74 from 1 in 42, with players coming to their team from other teams having their fumble rates go down as well. In 2006, Brady was one of the players lobbying for the away team to be able to provide their own footballs.

What the fuck is this sport? Is it even a sport or is it just the biggest F.U. to Americans since the White House was burnt down?

The NFL did n-o-t-h-i-n-g and even if their investigation isn't just written off and actually does turn up something, what is going to happen? Some fines for the multi-millionaires and some wrist-slapping in the form of draft picks lost?

I honestly don't care if the Patriots really are the best team in football or not, you can't play a sport and think cheating is OK. Am I the only one that thinks like this? The Patriots are good! Why fucking cheat?

And then I had the thought, why would the NFL do anything to them? They probably realized that their fans wouldn't care enough to not watch the game and people like me that never go out of their way to care about the game would because it gave drama and a story to this blood sport that we are so obsessed with.

When Seattle started to lose near the end and that abominable play calling that resulted in the interception, I about lost my mind.

Here I am, providing more publicity for something I find reprehensible. The Patriots didn't win as much as the NFL did. There's no rivalry between these teams; there's no drama except for the fact that the Patriots are basically the cartoon-villains of the NFL now, and the NFL played this up by not doing anything about this behavior.

I love athletics and I don't have a problem with adults hurting themselves as part of entertainment (although I'm completely against it for children), but this is too bitter of a pill to swallow.

There's not even a whisper of an illusion that football is about sportsmanship. It is, as it always has been, at every level, about winning at all costs. I was foolish to ever believe otherwise and to think that the NFL had any sort of moral baseline.

Am I crazy? Could sports ever become more about playing the game the way it's supposed to instead of winning at all costs? Comment below. Thanks for reading!

WotA Weekly #2: Space Demons

Ready for another WotA Weekly? This week, I'm tackling the "world" offworld.
Some basic cosmology to start: Ao is both the name of the central world of War of the Ages and the name for the entirety of the universe encompassing this world. Planet Ao is an alternate Earth and most of the series takes place in the far-future after magick comes back into the world.

Leading up to magick's return, the "race" of creatures calling themselves galateans, sapient/sentient robots, warred with mankind across the planet and throughout the space colonies. By this time, war with the galateans was one of the only things the space colonies shared in common with humans on planet. The space colonies had long since cut off contact with humans planetside and held themselves above the incessant wars raging across the planet. Not until galatean incursion into space did the colonies wage war.

They learned quickly.

The colonists turned their attention from terraforming and genetics to war. Still, when possible, treaties and ceasefires were made. In the same way that space humans held themselves to a higher standard than those planetside, galateans living in space did not feel the urgent desire to destroy and enslave the humans that their planetary brethren did. So far from their leader, the galts felt free to do as they wished.

By the year 3000, the galts and humans in space had a tentative peace worked out between them, although border disputes and raids were not uncommon. Galts could live in places otherwise inhospitable to all but the most genetically altered humans, so territory became less of an issue.

Then there was the Devastation. The seal was destroyed and billions died. Magick rushed back into the world. Gravitational energies erupted across the universe, crashing and destroying many colonies outright. Some human colonies attempted to return to Ao in order to help their ancestors after the Devastation.

The new magicks and unexpected animosity of the galateans upon their return, along with Ao's already limited spacefaring abilities meant that the returning colonists would never again see space.

Offworld, the return of the sealed away subRealms and magick meant entire civilizations returned to the outreaches of space. Here they had to contend with unexpected terraforming and humans where humans never lived before. Space dragons, much more powerful than terrestrial dragons and somewhat insulated from the Lessenings as well, attempted to bring order to the chaos and act as mediators between the civilizations.

Space returned to relative peace even as the Galatean-Draconic war waged for millennia. Finally, near 10,000 AD, a dimensional accident sundered the fabric of the universe and provided unfettered access to the Realm of Ao from the Nether Realms.

The planet of Ao remained mostly insulated through the powers of Yggdrasil, Wochirden, and the powerful Aegis surrounding the planet, but the Aegis in space was threadbare. Untold multitudes of demons erupted through the fabric of the cosmos without lessening to assault the remaining human colonies and returned alien civilizations.

Darkness swept across the solar system and beyond, as ever greater demon lords required greater and greater distances from the Aegis of Ao to avoid lessening. For every living creature in space though, human, galatean, lycanthrope, Jovian super worm, and more, dozens of lesser demons were there to assault them.


Questions? Thoughts? Please comment below. Thanks for reading!

WotA Weekly #1: Fae-Killers

Hi folks, here's the first of my new blog series. I decided to focus on WotA's versions of leprechauns and redcaps as it illustrates how WotA digests old myths and legends.


Blindingly fast, the revolt of the leprechauns was the first that actually broke through the defenses of Oberon's Castle to threaten Oberon directly . . . this was perhaps not the best course of action for the diminutive fae.

Until he was attacked directly, Oberon allowed the Faerie Councils to handle the revolt as part of their day-to-day management of the Faerie Realms; in fact, he was never even aware of the revolt until being attacked and stabbed by the invading force.

Oberon instantly annihilated the leprechauns throughout his castle with no more than a passing thought.

Leprechauns are strange creatures. So long as you witness them, they will chat amicably and move no faster or slower than you would expect as they try to deceive you into turning your head. Once your eyes are away, they seem to move faster than thought. On top of that, leprechauns were masters of camouflage and excellent at blending in to their surroundings. The speed of leprechauns is also affected by displays of faith. During the middle ages, humans avoided predation by leprechauns through quoting bible verses.

Some believe that the speed of leprechauns is not speed but quantum wave form. So long as they are in sight, their wave form is collapsed in a single location, but once they are unobserved, they can choose any of the possible locations within sight to collapse to instantaneously.

Leprechauns have measured their own speeds in excess of hundreds of miles per hour; some believe that this is a gross exaggeration but there are those that believe it is misinformation and that their true speeds are impossibly high.

For the leprechauns, drawing Oberon's ire was the worst possible outcome of their revolt. Oberon possesses a form of omniscience within the borders of Fae. From his castle, he can focus his attention and observe anything and everything that he chooses to. At the point of his stabbing, he focused his attention on all the leprechauns of the Faerie Realms.

Across the realms, leprechauns began to be murdered as their opponents discovered they lacked the speed of their race for as long as Oberon observed them. The total loss was in the millions.

Eventually, the survivors approached Oberon's Castle in fealty. The penalties Oberon imposed were severe.

Leprechauns were forced to wear brilliant scarlet outfits and red hats to aide others in seeing them. The second penalty was considered almost blasphemous by the other fae in that leprechauns were forced to wear boots shod in cold iron to simultaneously make every step they would ever take painful and to slow and hamper their abilities. Finally, leprechauns were forbidden from ever joining the Seelie or Unseelie Councils and ever meeting in groups.

The leprechauns fled from the center of the realms and took to haunting remote locations that were abandoned by other fae. Their hatred of the other fae only grew with their punishment, which continued with every generation. When the opportunity presented itself, they killed indiscriminately, and used the blood of their enemies as dye for their hats and clothes. They began to be known as redcaps.

Millennia passed, and although the population of redcaps never approached the levels that existed before the revolt, something else came to pass. They began to develop a resistance to cold iron.

Leprechauns traveled across the realms to harvest cold iron in greater quantities and began fashioning iron pikes to better kill other fae. They used star silver buckles on their shoes to counteract the remaining cold iron around them and began murdering fae in greater quantities.

They are nearly always solitary creatures, although when encountered away from the Faerie Realms they do not fear meeting others of their kind and working together to kill as many fae as they can find. Their thirst for blood is no longer restrained to killing other fae and they prey on any creatures that present weakness.


Thanks for reading guys! I hope you liked the first WotA Weekly. Let me know what you thought and if you have any questions about anything!

2015: WotA, short stories, mathematics, consulting,

You may be questioning a 2015 blog on one of the last days of January but you'll be OK, manage your inner naysayer.In 2014, I worked about 4000 hours. It was by far my most successful year even though I felt like I was only treading water. Writing had to be put on the back burner in lieu of day-job career opportunities . . . which were actually writing jobs, but that's besides the point. Now that those projects are complete, writing has come back to the forefront.
I've been writing a lot the last few weeks and I'm about ready to start fresh. I'm not going to give any deadlines until a particular work is ready-to-print, but a new year is a good time for goals and the like, so here we go. 
First, premiering here will be what I am tentatively calling WotA Weekly. At least once a week, I will be writing on some facet of the world of War of the Ages and publishing on this very blog; this could be something concerning the setting, the bestiary, flash fiction, etc. I've written the first two and once I've written a few more I will start putting these out multiple times a week. My goal is to write 50 over the course of the entire year; once I've put out about 8 of them, they will usually be published on Fridays. 
Second, there are going to be a lot of short stories this year. I've written a few and once they go through the editing phase, the beta phase, and the shop-around-to-a-couple-different-zines phase, I'll be releasing them to buy on Amazon et al. Some stories will be posted for free on Smashwords (although it takes a while for Amazon to price-match, so stay updated and informed by subscribing to my mailing list). Eventually, there will be collections and the like also.You can expect stand-alone horror, sci-fi, and fantasy stories as well as stories exploring more of already established worlds.
I'm releasing the next section that was planned for Zero's Mathematics soon, but after that I will be retooling future math books and starting fresh. After my experience in curriculum design this last year along with what teachers have approached me to ask for in my math books, the current format needs to be drastically altered to fit what makes sense to me now. I will also be experimenting with producing workbooks for classrooms this year. 
Please note that I am available for consulting and professional development concerning the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. Rates vary, but please feel free to query me with "CCSS" or "Common Core" or "math education" in the subject line and we can discuss what you need.
I'm also available for consulting on publishing, although this is last on my list of priorities.
I'd like to start adding a lot more art, both from my own pen and others. I have a lot more experience with the legal aspects now and feel confident that I will soon be opening up submissions as TFP. 
You may have noticed that I don't include advertisements on the page and that I've stopped with the Amazon Affiliate links. For the time being, I will continue to work this way, but I am planning on starting to use Google AdSense sometime this summer as a trial run and see how it works out. Hopefully, it will get to the point where I can take those ads back off the site, but I wanted to give everyone a heads up now.
Thank you for your support; please leave comments and questions below. 
~Zero

Revisiting the not-so- Amazing Spider-Man 2

There'll be spoilers here. I mean, whatever's left to be spoiled after one of the worst ad campaigns I can imagine. Literally EVERYTHING was given away in the commercials, even some scenes that didn't make it to the film. I suppose that's a spoiler too.

So I watched the Amazing Spider-Man 2 again tonight. I promise I'm not a masochist, really, but it's Spider-Man.
I didn't launch into a 36-hour retrospective on the meaning of life this time around, so I'm at least somewhat inured, but watching the climactic scene, THE SCENE, I couldn't help but bitch, "We will never get a good movie theater version of the death of Gwen Stacy."

That's a sin.

This movie should have been definitive.

If I was a kid, this is the movie that should have made my childhood, the one that determined the kind of person I was going to be; the one that I held up for all to see "this is me!"

And it should have been definitive for Spider-Man in the way that the death of Gwen Stacy was for Spider-Man in the comics. This should have given us the Spider-Man that everyone knows. I suppose it will still be, but it's such a disappointment. If Marvel gets the rights back, they've gone on record as saying it would be an established Spider-Man, not the high school one.

We almost had a shot of a good Gwen Stacy storyline with the Spectacular Spider-Man, and the wasted potential there of canceling a beloved show that was doing well just because of fucking rights still makes me sick to think about.

I suppose it's possible that Marvel could have an established Peter Parker as Spider-Man but still have him be in high school and finding out the kind of person he is and what it means to lose and sacrifice. But I find it unlikely. So what's the hope? 20 years later maybe a new reboot? Will I still be alive then?

Anyway, it should have been definitive. I wanted so badly for it to be definitive. Spider-Man is a part of me in the way that everyone's fandoms are a part of themselves, but Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a cancer. It's so terrible.

It's lazily terrible. There are plot holes and cartoonish characters and obvious continuity errors (really, 5 months has passed since she died but it's gone from early summer to at the fucking least spring? really? FUCK YOU)

We have Jim Carrey as E. Nigma, err, well, we have Jamie Foxx doing his impression of Jim Carrey being E. Nigma as Max Dillon and the titular (in some countries) Electro. LAZY. LAZY LAZY. Lazy character development, lazy character motivations, fucking insane character choices.

The Green Hobgoblin is given a death sentence, but well, his father lived for at least 40 years after the same death sentence, soo, why is he so bent out of shape? Most people don't live that long period. "You will not live past 60." Really?

Andrew Garfield is wonderful as Spider-Man and Emma Stone is similarly fantastic as Gwen Stacy, although placing herself into danger way the fuck more than you'd expect.

It's amusing at the Time Square scene that she is the only bystander that probably has some motivation to stay and watch the fight, while she is also the only bystander that is like, "why the fuck are other people staying and cheering instead of running away?"

Seriously, what the truck is wrong with the New Yorkers in this movie? Is that how New York actually is?

The entire film is one cartoonish coincidence and contrivance after another. Airports don't have back-up power? Gwen Stacy, who happens to be a genetics lab assistant, somehow knows the plans for the city's power grid? The Green Hobgoblin suit can heal death by mutant human-spider venom?


Oh my god, I forgot about the fucking web-hand. So stupid and overdone and LAZY.

If I had to sum up ASM2 in one word it would be LAZY.

Three words would be: lazy, cartoonish, and disappointing. A betrayal of trust.

I don't know what to do moving forward.

I've said this before, but I finally know what Star Wars fans felt like after watching the prequel trilogy. Such a disappointment.

If I wasn't backlogged on original fiction, I think this would be enough to drive me to write fan fiction.

If you suspend your reasoning, disbelief, and accept the fact that you're basically watching a cartoon where the director thinks kids are dumb as a brick, AND you fast-forward through any crap with Peter's parents, Max Dillon as E. Nigma, any part with Electro where he's not blowing stuff up, then there are elements of the movie to be enjoyed. This is how I watched it this time around, and I may even do it like this again now that I know what to fast-forward. I mean, I watched ASM at least a dozen times.

It's nice seeing Spider-Man save people. And it's nice seeing him get the crap beat out of him. And the character interactions between Gwen and Peter are always well-done, even if their relationship is more retarded than high school.

But you can't watch the movie without feeling its lack, the wasted potential, the dropped ball, the disgrace, and you inevitably need a palate cleanser.

I don't know if I can go back to watching the first ASM without this terrible taste in my soul from the second ASM; I never went back to watch X-Men 1 or 2 after the third one, and I never went back to watch Spider-Man 1 or 2 after the third one. Of course, that's because I never really liked those Spider-Man movies very much (I didn't dislike them though!).

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I hope I didn't repeat myself much from previous rants, but I had to get that off my chest. What are your thoughts?

Yes Virginia, multiplication is repeated addition

In my opinion, it's pretty stupid to not acknowledge this fact. Multiplication is repeated addition, it works perfectly fine as repeated addition, and that is just as true for natural numbers as it is for rational and irrational ones.

What's 3∙4? 4 + 4 + 4
What's 3∙2/7? 2/7 + 2/7 + 2/7
What's 1/2∙4?  Count four half a time, 2.
What's 1/2∙2/7? Count 2/7 half of a time, 1/7.
What's π∙3? 3 + 3 + 3 + (π - 3) ∙ 3, which is the irrational bit of pi times 3, so count 3 the irrational bit of pi times. 

. . . err, yeah, so . . .

So it's a bit rubbish (just a bit), but that doesn't mean it doesn't have value, and that doesn't mean the thinking of the above isn't true; it is true.  How do you count irrationally? You just do it. However, that kind of thinking does require a pretty fluent understanding of numbers and multiplication (which goes back to me saying over and over again that number sense is one of the most overlooked math skills (before common core of course)), so from a pedagogical perspective, I'm OK with devaluing the emphasis of the idea-ish. 

Aside: I always get more than a little bit frustrated when mathematicians refuse to have any sort of flexibility to their understanding. There's nothing wrong with negative area. There's nothing wrong with describing the derivative as the slope. I'm not saying you should stop there, but as long as you're fine with a certain amount of bend, pretty much everything can be extended to continue to make sense. Definitions are fantastic, but if you can't see how things are analogous, I don't know how you have any understanding of math at all.

Now, that being said, a much better representation of multiplication is area. I mean, the magnitude of the cross product is already the area of the parallelogram of the vectors, so it makes sense to do it this way, and thank god, it works, like, always (so long as you're OK with negative area . . .)

3×4 = the area of a rectangle of length 3 and 4, 12.
3×2/7 = the area of a rectangle of lengths 3 and 2/7; 6/7.
1/2 × 2/7 = the area of a rectangle of lengths 1/2 and 2/7; 1/7.
π × 3 = the area of a rectangle of lengths π and 3; which you know, when you go to actually count those tiles up, you'll have 3 by 3 tiles, and then you'll have 3 fractional tiles that are each 1 by the irrational bit of pi length. . . 

err . . . yeah, so, the important thing is that it works right? No, that's never the important thing. LOOK HOW AWESOME THIS IS. This is amazing. Two separate ideas leading to the exact same understanding, and the second idea maybe helps you understand a little more what I meant by counting 3 by the irrational bit of pi times. It's the area of those slivers of rectangles.

Picture:
And it even goes farther than this; think of the Cartesian product between two sets, one set (let's call it 3) being the set of real numbers between 0 and 3, the other set (let's call it π) being the set of real numbers between 0 and π. Then the picture above is a picture of the Cartesian product of the two sets!

The Cartesian product is the set of all ordered pairs of both sets, wanna' guess how it's denoted? 3×π. This is the set of things like the point (0,3), (3,2), (1.9, π), any ordered pair which can be made with numbers from 0 to 3 for the first coordinate and 0 to pi for the second coordinate.

Of course, it's not commutative or associative, and it would be tempting to describe the set as being of "size" 3π, but in reality, the set is infinitely large.

The differences are interesting, not arbitrary, and mathematics is beautiful.

But yes, by all means, get hung up on describing multiplication being repeated addition.

Doctor Who Series 8 Finale Lookback

THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD.

So vamoose if you don't want to be spoiled. Spoilers after the jump:









I have never before been unmoved by a heroic sacrifice in Doctor Who. I mean, I know that heroic sacrifices occur with almost hilarious regularity on the show, but whenever a series regular or even a really good one-off character bit the big one, I was always moved.

Not so with Danny Pink. Good fucking riddance. I hated his character and I hated Clara Oswald with his character.

Up until Series 8, Clara had almost immediately jumped into the lead of my all-time-favorite companions of the Doctor. But it was almost like Moffat hadn't looked past the Name of the Doctor when creating her character and lost for something to do with her, shoehorned a bland love interest.

Now, originally I enjoyed Danny's character and I thought he brought a certain dynamic to the show and relationships of the characters on the show, but in the end we find out the reason why he was such a fuck: he was too messed up from his own personal tragedies and was projecting onto the Doctor and Clara.

I'm OK with the Doctor thinking the Doctor is not a good person, and I'm even OK with Clara going along with that, but to allow Danny to say the shit he said to the Doctor. Danny is a fuck. The Doctor has saved countless lives across time and space and has sacrificed everything to do so, and Clara fucking knows that, and Danny does his bullshit officer spiel.

It infuriated me every single time and Clara's handling of the entire situation made me stop watching the show for the last month and a half although it didn't become crystal clear to me until watching the finale.

Series 8 has been a lot of wasted potential for Clara and for the Doctor's relationship with her, and even though there were some high points and it was nowhere near as bad as the first half of Series 7, it is just incredibly underwhelming.

I hate to sound like a fanboy, but if Moffat doesn't have the inspiration or ability to write the material the way it needs to be written, then it certainly seems like it is time to hand it over.

Without reading about the exact limits, I'll go out on a limb and say that the first six series of Doctor Who and the associated specials are fantastic. Life-changing, top-notch sci-fi, incredible relationships, heroism, sacrifice, feels, etc.

Series 7 first half blew. Series 7 second half was a return to form, but lagged in the memory of 7 first half. The specials continued to be good, and Series 8 seems like it's going through the motions.

I thought for a while there that I had outgrown Doctor Who in the way I sometimes will outgrow certain things (for instance, I outgrew Power Rangers when I was 10 or so), but that's pretty ridiculous because I haven't outgrown PLENTY (in fact, Power Rangers is pretty much the only thing I can recall outgrowing. . . ). I still watch cartoons, I'm still a kid at heart, I still love "Little Nemo in Slumberland" for crying out loud. I recently had occasion to go back and watch old episodes of Doctor Who, and it still moved me in the exact same way as before. I haven't outgrown Doctor Who, Doctor Who has gone down in quality.

It's disgusting to think about. It's not the train-wreck that Amazing Spider-Man 2 was, but it has been derailed and I grow increasingly worried for the future of the show.

And are we not going to get the acknowledgement that this Doctor still has a crush on Clara and the reason he changed into an old man was because he wanted to prevent anything from happening between the two of them? There's a reason why he was so antagonistic towards Danny, even before Danny revealed himself as a fuck.

Thoughts on Zelda 2014-2015

First, I love the Legend of Zelda. My only tattoo is a Triforce and my next tattoo will probably be heart containers. That said, the upcoming Zelda for the Wii U (2015) marks the first time since the Gamecube that I've owned a current Nintendo system when a Zelda game came out.

I've made a playlist of the current game footage and will update it when I see new videos:
Zelda Wii U Playlist
Anyway, to my thoughts.

GORGEOUS. This is a seriously beautiful game that looks to be the pinnacle of all Zelda games to date. I loved the comment, "real horses don't usually run into trees" and I love the scope and size of the world. 
I hope that there will be some fast-travel built in, but I am STOKED to explore this world. 
***Zelda fans have a lot to be happy about. Right now there's Hyrule Warriors and Smash Bros satisfying your non-traditional Zelda urges. I personally love Hyrule Warriors (I've always loved the Dynasty Warriors games, and this is as refined a version of those games as I've ever seen; mindless but fun); the weakest part of the game is the main campaign, especially shoehorning Ganon into it, but the depth and number of the Adventure Maps is freaking awesome. 
I haven't gotten to play more than the demo of the 3DS Smash, but I'm sure I'll be getting the Wii U version for Christmas, so I am excited for that, and then we have the 3DS update to Majora's Mask right around the corner!
AND THEN THIS NEW ZELDA WII U GAME!
Not to mention DLC for Hyrule Warriors along the way. 
Good time to be a Zelda fan!