What Would Jack Sparrow Do?

One of my favorite franchises is the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and this is one of my favorite scenes from the second movie, Dead Man's Chest:



I love the character of Captain Jack Sparrow. Although he's morally ambiguous, he's the ultimate survivor. Jack never gives up, and somehow always thinks of a way out. It's a good model to follow I think. So, sometimes when you're having a hard time, it's good to ask yourself: what would Jack Sparrow do?

Spock Was A Buddhist

I realize that the creators of Star Trek didn't intend for Spock to be a Buddhist (at least not openly), but I think Spock display some Buddhist virtues:

• Spock is concerned for the welfare of others over himself.
• Spock, like all Vulcans, is concerned with training and disciplining the mind.  The mind is the foremost thing to overcome.
• Spock opposed irrational (i.e. "illogical") thinking.

An admirable character, I think.

Make Sure You Can Spot The Difference

It's important to know true religious leaders from fake ones:



Watch out for religious "leaders" in high-top sneakers and incredibly foul language.

Just Because I Like This Song

This is Brown Eyed Girls' Abracadabra, the performance version:



The main music video is a bit too racy for this blog, and was banned on Korean TV from what I heard. You can find it easily on Youtube and decide for yourself. In any case, the song and dance are pretty awesome. If you see PSY's video "Gentleman", you can see the same dance used. Ga-in from BEG also makes an appearance in that video. :)

Brown Eyed Girls new album, yay

I finally got the latest album, Black Box, from Brown Eyed Girls:

The album has both "Kill Bill" and "Recipe".  The inside photo book is nice too and has a lot of glossy photos of the ladies. You can see some of them on the Nega Network photo album too if curious.

The album itself has a lot of good hits. I've been enjoying it since yesterday.  I like the opening song, among others, and I'm thankful that unlike some other KPop albums I've bought in the past, it's not just a couple hit songs at the beginning or end, and a lot of other flat, boring ones.  BEG know how to make good songs.  :)

Definitely a nice addition to my small, but growing BEG album collection.

Enjoying Victoria B.C., Gangnam Style

This weekend, my wife, daughter and I enjoyed a small trip to Victoria B.C. in Canada:



Victoria is the capitol of British Columbia, though smaller in size than the city of Vancouver, and a bit more old-fashioned. It's a great city of visit though for a few nights:



It's relatively small, so you can walk around and see most of it, has a lot of history, but also great food, scenery, etc.



We spent most of the time in and around the city of Victoria, enjoying breakfast at Murchie's which was awesome, seeing the wonderful Butchart Gardens:

:

...and so on. It was a great weekend, my thanks to wonderful people in Victoria who made it possible. :)

P.S. Speaking of Gangnam Style, we did go to a certain Korean restaurant in downtown Victoria, but it was pretty disappointing. I won't mention it by name. Suffice to say we haven't yet found a good, legitimate Korean restaurant in either Victoria or Vancouver yet. Suggestions appreciated. On the other hand, fish and chips in Victoria were fantastic.

Basics of Buddhism

Something I remembered from the Diamond Sutra recently:

All conditioned phenomena
Are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow
Like the dew, or like lightning
You should discern them like this

Translation by Professor Charles Muller. The term "conditioned phenomena" means all things that come into existence: people, thoughts, feelings, trends, planets, etc. Because it comes into existence, it will also fade. All good things must come to an end.

Learning Klingon for Fun and For Profit

Hi all, Thanks to a little credit I got recently on Amazon I decided to buy a little gift for myself. I purchased a used copy of the famous Klingon Dictionary.

I used to own this book as a teenager, maybe 20-25 years ago when I was a young, die-hard “Trekkie” (Star Trek fan). However, one time I remember bringing it to school one day and getting ridiculed by my schoolmates and after that I was so embarrassed I never brought it to school again. Eventually I lost that book, or sold it, I can’t recall. But times have changed a lot. What was considered fringe and nerdy is now mainstream and popular. A lonely nerd like myself now works a respectable job and has started a family. So, recently I’ve been getting in touch with the nerdy side that I suppressed for so many years out of shame. It felt really good to buy this book again.

Also, I am a bibliophile so I like to buy used books anyway. This copy was definitely worn and the pages browned, but I’ll give it a good home. :-)

But what about learning Klingon? Having learned Japanese, a little Korean, a little Latin, Mandarin and such, I am fascinated with languages in general. What makes Klingon so interesting is that it was made with great attention and care by Marc Okrand, a professional linguist. So it’s not just a few words and phrases thrown in a few TV episodes, but it represents a fascinating language and expression of Klingon culture. It’s not a very practical language, but it is interesting.

Unlike a real language though, there are little or no resources available by native speakers so learning it is more of a hobby. Still, it would be fun to show up at a Star Trek convention one day and strike up a little Klingon conversation like this scene from Star Trek VI:

 
Time will tell. :-)

bortaS bIr jablu’DI’reH QaQqu’ nay’

Welcome Back, Brown-Eyed Girls

Recently Brown Eyed Girls came back with a new album with two excellent songs: Recipe and Kill Bill. You can see both here on a recent episode of the Korean music show Inkigayo:


I was blown away by both songs.  They really rocked the stage.  Brown Eyed Girls are kind of a special phenomenon in KPop.  The members are in their early 30s but they're much hotter than younger KPop female artists, they sing really awesome, and unlike some other groups, they just keep putting out awesome albums. Here's the video for Kill Bill by the way:


I didn't think any other KPop group could put together such an awesome homage to the Kill Bill series of movies. In my personal list of artists, BEG always hovered in the top 3 or so, but after this, they shot to number 1 in my personal rankings.

Welcome back ladies, we missed you.

This Is How I Feel Sometimes

A great comic from xkcd:

 

The Universe is so vast, and so much of it is unexplored, it makes our little home feel sometimes stifling. It reminds me of the Lotus Sutra, a Buddhist text, and its vast, mind-blowing descriptions:

The Buddha: “Suppose someone were to take five hundred thousand billions of myriads of countless three-thousand great thousandfold worlds and grind them into dust. Then, after going east through five hundred thousand billions of myriads of innumerable lands, one of those specks of dust was deposited. And suppose he continued eastward until he had used up all those specks. What do you think, my good sons? Is it possible to imagine or calculate the number of all those worlds?” (pg. 291-292)

It's interesting how the ancient Indians, like today's astronomers, marveled at the great Universe around us.

Classic Trek on BSD

(Klingons are slippery devils, they is...)

Since I got a virtual instance of NetBSD working on my Mac at home with Virtualbox, I've been playing with certain classic games. One of these games is the original text-based game trek, which comes by default in NetBSD.

Trek is a tough game, make no mistake. It's an homage to the original series, and was written when graphical interfaces were not very feasible. However, the original designer managed to make it a game that is both engaging and challenging. The only trouble is that it's hard to figure out how to play it now because the documentation is kind of scarce and hard to read. In the case of NetBSD, it comes with instructions in the form of a .me file, but I haven't yet figured out how to read that file apart from seeing the raw formatting with less.

So this page is a tribute to this classic game, and also helps share some of the basics on how to play. Because the game has been ported multiple times, there are slightly different versions out there, each with their own style of control. Thus, this post is focused on the BSD port of Trek. Since I am still new at the game, there are plenty of newb mistakes, but I'm trying to write things down as I learn them. Please be patient. :)  

Starting the Game

The game begins with a humble screen like so:


According to the docs, the rule of thumb is that shorter games are harder, while longer games are somewhat easier. This is because you're given a fixed period of time to destroy all the Klingon ships, and with a shorter window of time, this is pretty hard. Next you can choose the difficulty level. Hitting '?' here will give you several obvious choices. Finally you're taken to the main screen for Trek. The E is you, the Enterprise. The * are stars, and present obstacles. If a photon torpedo hits a star, you will cause the star to explode (go nova). The @ symbol is a planet which you can land on if required (after abandoning ship, for example). You're also expected to defend them from Klingon (K) attacks, and if they are invaded or destroyed, you lose points, so take it seriously. Finally, the Starbases, usually 3 per game, are represented by a # (hash). Here, you can dock if you are next to a starbase, and get fully repaired, refueled and so on. Don't forget to undock though when done. You are expected to defend these just as you defend planets.  

Navigation

This was the hardest part for me to figure out, and where the directions diverged most from other ports, I believe. The BSD port uses a 360-degree angle system:

• 0 degrees is up (north).
• 90 degrees is right (east).
• 180 degrees is down (south).
• 270 degrees is left (west).

Also, Federation Space is divided into sectors (a 7x7 grid) which are divided further into quadrants. One screen, like the one shown above, is a single sector, and contains a 10 rows and 10 columns of quadrants. Thus, if you want to move, everything has to be done in decimal units. If you go 0.1, that means you move one "dot" on the screen (one-tenth of a sector), while moving "1" means you're moving one sector over. Keep that in mind as you navigate within a single sector. Thus if you want to move 3 "dots" over, you move 0.3 sectors. You can either move (i.e. use warp drive) or use impulse. Warp is faster but drains your ship's energy faster. You can also specify which warp factor using the warp command. Higher warp is yet more faster, but uses that much more energy. Here's an example:

I decided to do a long-range scan, or lrscan which shows 1 Klingon vessel in the sector to the right, and one below. I decide to attack the one on the right. I had already set warp factor to 5 earlier, so I just issue a move command, go 90 degrees (right) and .4 sectors which will put me just over into the next sector.  

Combat

Combat in Trek isn't easy, but very fun. Like the original Enterprise, you have two options:

• Phasers (phasers) - use lots of energy, and shields must be down, but very accurate.
• Photon torpedoes (torpedo) - use less energy, and shields can stay up, but less accurate, limited supply.

Speaking from limited experience, phasers are easier because you can use automatic targetting. Unfortunately, even with that, Klingons still manage to slip away into the next sector. If you do hit a Klingon vessel, it seems that 250-energy or so will usually work. However, if they slip away, some of that will be wasted.

Torpedoes are great because you can fire a "spread", with a maximum of 10°, which likely hit your target, but waste torpedoes because only 1 is required to kill a Klingon vessel. If you're at a right-angle to a Klingon ship, there's a good chance you can hit it, but at odd angles, it gets more difficult. You can either move to a better angle, or try your luck with a torpedo spread. However, don't hit stars! Spock gets annoyed:

 
Lastly, there is a cloak option which lets you hide from Klingons vessels. This is a great way to sneak up on them too, but it burns through energy pretty quick, so you may want to use it to slip into a sector, maneuver to the right spot, and de-cloak. Federation regulations prevent you from firing weapons while cloaked. But surprising your enemies by de-cloaking close by and firing torpedoes at them is pretty satisfying. :)  

Final Bits of Advice

Like many classic games (think nethack), it has a pretty steep learning curve. No tutorials, just what you see is what you get. So, expect to fail many times until you get the hang of it. Once you do, you can then move onto tougher and tougher scenarios until you're the next Capt. James T. Kirk. Good luck! Qapla'!

Testing

This is a test. 

Or is it? (Ominous music)