Video games

As a child I loved video games. No really, I liked video games more than just about anything else in life. I grew up in the golden age of arcade machines and I spent hours watching people play Pacman, Donkey Kong, Tron, Mr. Do, Mario Bros. (just the regular, not the super), Spyhunter, Dragon's Lair, and many others. And when I say I loved video games more than anything, well, here's a few examples.

In grade 2, I had a huge crush on Leah Hilson. My very generous sister somehow manage to arrange a playdate over at her house on my behalf. I went over to Leah's house and her mom asked me what I wanted to do, listing the swimming pool, treefort, board games, and the Atari. Bingo! I sat and played Pitfall for 6 hours and didn't speak to Leah once.

When I went on ski vacations with my family, the lodge had an arcade on the second floor. Many days I would claim I didn't feel like skiing in the beautiful Wasatch mountains and instead spent the day hanging around the arcade watching people play video games. Of course there was always that dead time between 10 and 3 where everyone was out skiing and there was no one playing in the arcade and I didn't have any quarters. But I didn't mind. I'd just watch the endless 15 second loops of sample game play that the machines used to lure you in.

During the summer holidays, there was nothing I liked better than to bike to downtown Burlington and spend my day hanging out in the Golden Nugget Arcade. It was a dark, grimy, smoke filled, heavy metal playing, drug dealing pit. But I couldn't be happier than when I was hanging around there watching video games. Every so often, I'd find a quarter on the floor, or a leftover credit on the machine, and then joy of joys, I actually got to play video games.

Naturally I wanted a home system so that I could play video games all the time. I really hoped that my mom would buy me an Atari, or a Colecovision, heck I would have even settled for a Vectrex. Instead she got me a TRS-80. Unlike the previous consoles I mentioned, the TRS-80 actually had a full keyboard, and a pretty good embedded BASIC system so that you could learn something about computers. You could even play great games like Dungeons of Daggorath.


This attempt to sneak something educational into my life was surprisingly effective. Rather than spend money on expensive games, my mom bought me a book of code listings. Yes, I could play a game if I just first transcribed multiple pages of dense BASIC code onto the computer. Luckily you only had to type all the code in once, so long as you had an attached tape recorder to save your work. Any boombox would do, so long as it had a record button. Old BASIC code is terrible. Rather than naming the slots that store your scores with descriptive names like PlayerScore and HighScore, the severe memory restrictions of the computer meant that these slots would be called PS and HS, or as was often the case AA and BB. So it wasn't easy to learn anything from transcribing these listings, but I did get a sense of how to branch execution, assign values, and abuse GOTO statements.

In High School I started taking some programming courses. But I was bored with all the data structures and information processing. I wanted to make video games, and you couldn't easily access the graphics hardware from Basic or Turbo Pascal. So I purchased a copy of Borland's C++ and learned to program by reading the manuals that came with the compiler. Ouch. Later I found a great book on graphics programming, and wrote a few games using the secret Mode X VGA resolution of 320 x 200 (just a wee bit smaller than the iPhone's resolution of 320x480). Then it was off to University, with dreams of becoming a great programmer, and hopes that I might one day work for a real video game company like Blizzard.

Sadly, in University I was exposed to women, socialists, and scientists, and my dreams of becoming a video game programmer started to crumble. Instead my 20s saw me through a string useful, but dull programming jobs:

Writing scheduling software for Inco - oh the girls are out to bingo and the boys are getting stinko and there'll be no talk of Inco it's a Sudbury Saturday night. Yes, that Inco.
Writing cash register software, or point of sale software as we liked to call it.
Working for the investor ripoff con ModernGroove.com.
Writing a filter to import Outlook 2000 mailboxes into Outlook 2001.
Writing plant control software for Lehigh Cement.
Writing translation filters to import data from PeopleSoft into Business Objects.
Developing visualization software to overlay microarray data onto protein interaction networks (yes Masters degrees are fun.)
Writing software for high throughput analysis of flow cytometry data.

I was once offered a job to develop a massively multiplayer online 3D game. But as it turned out, that game was poker, and I didn't really fancy getting involved in online gambling. In the meantime, Eddy, game designer extraordinaire, had been busily working on his hobby project Osmos. I played some early prototypes in Montreal and thought it was pretty darn fun, but when I saw the finished project I was blown away. I knew I needed to be a part of it. Luckily at that time, Eddy was nearing a total breakdown, and he was happy to offload some of the work. And so it was that I quit my cancer research job, and finally returned to the dreams of my youth to program video games. I've spent the past 2 months furiously working on the Mac version of Osmos, and it has been released today! But this time, I didn't skip any ski days for video games.

Go check it out at Hemisphere Games: http://www.hemispheregames.com/osmos/.




Addendum: I should point out that the finished product was incredibly awesome, thanks not only to Eddy's work, but also the rest of the team, Dave, Kun, Andy, and many more.

More skiing

My life seems to revolve around skiing these days. Here are a few more pictures to help you understand why. All pictures courtesy of Matt Sumner.


The rosy cheeked glow of a windy -18 degree day.


Our favourite ridge. The skiing in the trees down the left side is phenomenal. I suppose I ought to keep it a secret, but there just seems to limitless powder for everyone. No new snow falls, but everyday there's fresh powder off the ridge. It's magic.


Looking back over Whitewater at 2:30pm. Oh but these winter days are too short.

The Internet is awesome.

The Internet is awesome.

I woke up this morning cold. Using my modern survival skills, I walked over to the thermostat and turned up the heat, but nothing happened. Yikes, a cold snap is approaching Nelson, and our furnace appears to be broken.

Well, I thought, perhaps a fuse has blown, but a quick trip to the fuse box ruled out that possibility. So I headed downstairs to have a look at the furnace. The gas hot water heater was happily burning away, so I knew that our bill had been paid (a troubleshooting step that hasn't been solved for Matt's wireless Internet connection.) So what was wrong with our furnace?

Now, I'm not a particularly skilled handyman. I don't own any tools aside from a Leatherman and some duct tape, not even a pair of vice grips. But, as one of the manliest men in the world once told me, sometimes the secret to fixing things is to pull off the cover and have a poke around.

I pulled the cover off the furnace to be greeted by darkness. Clearly the pilot light was out. Or perhaps this was a new furnace that has electric ignition and doesn't have a pilot light. But somehow the font for the furnace name didn't exactly scream new furnace to me.


Now the handy Airco corporation had included a set of instructions on how to relight the pilot light.

But I was stuck on the second sentence of step 2. "Light Pilot." Well, how do I do that, I wondered? The pilot light is easy to find when it's glowing a nice shade of blue, but when it's out, how do you find it?

Enter the Internet. A quick search brought up this wonderful page on how to troubleshoot gas furnaces. These instructions also assumed you knew where to hold your lighter when lighting the pilot light, but fortunately their explanation of how the whole system worked allowed me to reason through it. If I'm holding open a valve to relight the pilot light, maybe I should follow the tube the valve is connected to. Voila, pilot light burner found.

Sadly, the pilot light wouldn't stay lit. But oh sweet sweet Internet, you held my hand through this problem too. A quick trip to the hardware store, $8 for a new thermocouple and we have heat again.


Would I have been able or willing to repair a gas furnace without the Internet? Not a chance. But thanks to the modern information age I sit here toasty and warm, with the happy satisfaction of having fixed the problem myself. Maybe I'll go buy some tools.

A morning, no wait all day ski

Last night, I had a dream. I was wandering in front of my house in the dark, when I suddenly saw a horde of small animals on my front lawn. Most of them were black kittens, but there was also a pair of skunks and a chipmunk. The chipmunk seemed to be heading straight for me. But whatever, it's only a chipmunk, I thought. Suddenly it leaped at me and sank it's little teeth into my finger. I waved around frantically trying to get the little bastard off, when I saw the skunk galloping towards me. Luckily at this point I was saved by my alarm yanking me out of dream world to go skiing.


Welcome to my new Nelson life. These lovely slopes are a mere 20 minute drive from my house. The idea was to go for a quick morning ski, as has been the habit for much of November. Half our regular crew are down in Vancouver for convocation, so it was just Eddy and me this morning. We went for an explore and spent most of the time following a ridgeline in dense fog before we poked out into warm rejuvenating sunshine. Lucky thing, as I had left my thermos full of tea on the kitchen counter.



Some Slocan valley locals pointed us towards sick slopes.


We snuck in some powderific turns before an ominous creak groaned from Eddy's ski.


(Just in case it's not obvious, yes his ski has been torn asunder.)

And so it was that we got to spend the whole day outside, slowly enjoying the lovely scenery as Eddy drifted along one footed back to the car. Crisortunity? Perhaps Eddy will return on Thursday with a split board.

Helm creek in the shoulder season

On Wednesday I took advantage of my new bossless lifestyle and headed out for one last Coastal hike. Christine and I headed to Helm Creek, for some glorious shoulder season hiking. After a few kilometers, the trail went from clear with occasional patches of snow, to snowy with occasional clear patches, to quite a lot of snow. Excitingly, a bear had decided to walk along the great BC Parks pathway leaving tracks to follow for several kilometers. The bear stuck quite closely to the trail, taking every bridge and twist and turn, and I had to pay attention to make sure I didn't accidentally wander off the trail and start following the bear.



The scenery was fantastic, the semi-frozen creek being particularly delightful.



The snow got rather deep, and we had to turn back before we hit our planned view point. I'll have to return in the summer and see it in all its wildflower glory.

Thicker bones

I realise I may have never mentioned mountain biking on this blog. This is a serious omission, as I've spent pretty much all my free time this year pursuing my new sport. The problem is that I don't tend to stop on my rides to take photographs, and who wants to read a post that's an intimidating wall of text. But today, I had my camera along.

It was another glorious day of sunshine to tack on to an already spectacular fall. The forecast calls for proper fall rains to commence on Tuesday and end in April, so I dashed out to ride Pipeline on Mt. Fromme. The conditions were perfect, not too dusty, not too muddy. I rode the tight steep upper corners with ease, finally had the nerve to ride the super-fun triple rock roll, and I was sticking to the bridges like glue. The next little bit of trail didn't look intimidating at all:


But sure enough it was evil. The secret is that handlebar-height bulge in the tree guarding the entrance to the bridge. 99% of my body rode past the tree. The baby finger on my right hand did not. With a sickening crunch I was tossed from my bicycle. "Golly gee darn it," I said. Then I taped my fingers together and rode down to the hospital. There the x-rays showed that I had indeed broken my baby finger. So the nurse made me a splint that I'll need to wear for the next 4-6 weeks:


Yikes! Don't let the Republicans see this. Apparently the hospital was out of proper tape for making splints, so I got less useful waterproof tape.
Including the ribs (which I never blogged about) that's two broken bones in just one season of mountain biking. Surely any sane person would give up the sport. But I'm just thankful that winter is here so that I won't miss any more good riding days until spring.

Deeks peak

"Much less frequently travelled than the trail to Deeks Lake, the route to Deeks Peak can be overgrown and bushy." 103 Hikes

Somehow I missed the overgrown and bushy part of the description when I headed out with Christine on Monday's hike. And so, sporting only a pair of shorts, I started beating my way up to Deeks Peak. Though the first 3/4 of the route is on logging roads, the heavily overgrown nature of the trail makes it feel more like an adventurous bushwack than a dull logging road slog. The trail was heavily overgrown with salmonberries, thimbleberries, trailing blackberries, black currants, and other spiky but tasty plants. In fact, I was so used to getting spiked, that it took me a while to realise that I'd actually been stung by a wasp. I just wish we'd been there two weeks earlier when the thimbleberries would have been at peak ripeness.

Mid way up the trail, we came upon Kallahne "lake", which as it turns out was little more than a mud puddle. We attempted to swim, but we were quickly defeated by the maximum depth of 1 foot of water, or perhaps 2 if you count the foot of mud you sank in to. We exited dirtier than we went in.



Christine heroically carried some excellent Greek salad up for lunch. We forgot the forks, but that just made the salad all the easier to high-grade with our fingers.



From the lake, it was excellent North Shore steepness up to fantastic views.




Here you see Deeks peak on the right and the summit of Mt. Windsor on the left. We didn't realise we had reached the top when we summited Deeks Peak, so we headed down the col and accidentally climbed Mt. Windsor too.


In the distance you can see the beautiful blue of the easily accessible Deeks Lakes. Perhaps a destination for the next trip.

Satan's eye

I remember when my thoughts were like yours. Before this madness gripped me. When mornings were ripe with rich bubbling caffeine, and no thoughts of evil crossed my mind.

It grew so slowly. I barely even noticed the day it began. The espresso maker sputtered an innocent gurgle, like a baby trying to sing along with momma. The sound of the coffee bleeding through the rotten O-ring was inaugible over the happy bubbling of completed espresso, sitting in that solid, yea friendly, Turkish boiler. How alike the sound of joyous completion and oncoming evil.

But on that day an evil entered the house. It seized the roommates and sent them out in search of replacement O-rings. Oh how I constantly wish that they could have bought the correct size. But nO! The O-rings would not nestle in the Turkish cauldron.

The packages lay for days in the middle of the island, staring at me with every meal. One evening I thought that they were gone for good, but I gasped as I opened the cutlery drawer and found them standing stubbornly between me and the knives. Gingerly I threw them back to the counter, hoping they would find a better place to live, but they had found an affinity for the drawer.



I fought through daily to my knives and forks, until one day I devised a cunning plan. I removed the rings from the kitchen, and hid them in a drawer in the living room. Perhaps the source of the power was the kitchen itself?

Giddily I danced about the house for a week. Oh what jOy! The weights hooked into my heart slid free. My pleasure was so great, I forgot about the devilish rubber rings. They were gone for so long. I neglected them, thought nothing more of them, ceased to control them. Months went by. I payed them no attention.

hsssssss. Such a simple sound. What sane man could be afraid of it. Not a breath of fear did I feel as coffee sprayed small bubbles over the stove. But inevitably they were back, taunting me from the island.

Madness took me. No! I cried. I shall never write a passive-agrressive fridge note. I did not recognize the man with the dry erase marker in his hand.



What had I done? I fled the house and tried to keep the evil away by thundering drums and screeching guitars. I could never have imagined what would await me when I returned home.

The mark on the door loomed ominously.



Every corner of the kitchen was covered in terrifying toroids.




I fled screaming up the stairs, straight in to the trap.


My sanity is no more.

The deck

Earlier this year, I stepped through a rotting plank in our deck. I put a planter over the hole and went on with my life. Later that year, a guest at a barbecue stepped on a nail as the wood surrounding it had rotted away. Little harm was done, and we hammered the nail deep into the base. Problem solved. Forever.

Then last week, when James was in town, he decided he'd do a proper job of it. He pulled up the one or two planks that were rotting to replace them with new lumber.



It quickly became clear that we'd have to replace a good chunk of the deck.




Christine won the endurance award for spending hours sanding down the non-rotten planks in preparation for staining. The choking dust from the sander was intense. As was the high pitched whine from the sander that summoned complaining neighbours from more than 5 houses away.


Clara came by, who hadn't seen Christine in years. She was quickly put to work sanding down the railing.


The work went surprisingly quickly, and we managed to stain the deck just before a freak thunderstorm in Vancouver. In the middle of 4 weeks of endless sunshine, 6mm of rain, thunder, and lightning pummeled our freshly stained deck minutes after we had finished painting. The storm was magnificent, and the second coat didn't take all that long.

The new deck is wonderful. James was rewarded for all his hard work with a devestating case of food poisoning, followed by a nasty virus, once again calling in to question the Karma model of the universe.



A great big thank you to James! Isn't it amazing to have friends who build decks for fun on their vacation.

Post-wedding camping

Kathryn and Mark were married last weekend. Though the details are both hilarious and touching, I have not a single picture of the event. So I'm going to skip to the end, and post some photos of the post-wedding camping trip.

As a small and nimble fast and light party we descended to Bear Beach on the Juan de Fuca trail for a night of camping.
The crew quickly got to work setting up camp.


The gigantic six man tent was cussed in the wind, but it was soon wrestled in to a stable position.


The greatest thing about beach camping is how easy it is to build driftwood fires. Perfect for cooking nutritious balanced meals.



Our lovely campsite was under a cliff of strawberry plants (the green, mossy looking plants up on the cliff)! This must be an amazing campsite in June.


The next day saw us hike the section of trail from Bear beach towards Chin beach.

It was an amazing coastal experience, complete with gigantic Sitka spruce, a very large whale of unknown species, and even trilliums growing by the side of the trail. Good times were had by all, despite the 7 hours of rain on Monday. I can't wait to hike the whole trail.

The marathon part deux

If you remember the fun from just watching last fall's marathon, it should be no surprise that this spring I decided to participate. I overloaded myself on yuppie gear, expensive running shoes, heart monitor, body glide, iPod shuffle, and spent the winter training with Hal Higdon's novice half-marathon program. Marathon day arrived in the blink of an eye, and the fun began.

It was the usual Rabbits in attendance, Christian, Christine, Kathryn, Mark, myself, and guest rabbit James who inspired us all with his motto "why train?"

We fixed up the house guest bikes so we could roll down the 2.5km down the hill to the start line. It would also give us an opportunity to test our post-running endurance by climbing the steep hill on the way back to the house. Here I am teaching my apprentice James how to replace the rear derailleur cable.
The elites Christian and James took a casual approach to quad and thumb stretching.


I took the motto, "what gets measured improves", and scientifically went to gauge my flexibility:


They say it's important not to change your routine on marathon day. Mark decided to stick with his classic lucky shorts and shirt.



James and I posing for the Suunto watch catalog.


In the blink of an eye, it was all over. Christian wowed us all, placing 99th overall, with a Boston Marathon qualifying time of 3:09.50. James fell apart completely, and exhausted and wimpering quaked over the finish line in a pokey 3:39.22. Kathryn put in a solid 4:10.55, and Mark was the hero of the day, finishing his first ever marathon, running from start to finish, in 5:42.28. On the half side, Christine and I both put in personal bests of not only our longest runs, but also our fastest runs. Christine breezed to the finish line in 1:57.00, while my suffering lasted a mere 1:52.45.

We realised we'd forgotten to take our victory medal portrait after we were on our bicycles and starting for home. At this point, Mark could not get off the bike, but we could pose around him. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank McDonald's, visible in the background, a sponsor of health and fitness at the Vancouver marathon.

We had a massive hunger after the marathon, so we went to eat giant burgers.

Nature showered us in flower petals

Luckily, the marathon coincided with sing-a-long night at the Railway club, the first Monday of every month. A few beers and some mad cowbell playing, and an unbelievable weekend of fun was over.