Abe Pazos's blog

I have another blog now where I uploaded photos and described my last trip to Uganda. You can find it at blog.hamoid.com.

The motivation to write this post is to share some links to online games I enjoyed playing last year.

Long time ago, in the Amiga times, I used to play lots of games. They all seemed to be different and original. Later I used to play graphic adventures, which I found also amazing. The graphics were terrible, but this did not matter. It was the story behind it. But then came the 3D shooters era and I stopped playing games.

On one hand, I had the impression that you always needed to have the fastest computer to play those games, and I did not understand why that was a requirement, when it had been fine to have a slow computer before. I used to have fun even in my 3.5 Kb Commodore 1 Mhz computer, and I know I still would today, because it was not about the graphics. It was about playing something that became increasingly difficult, and learning and becoming better at it.

On the other hand, it felt like everything was 3D, cars, shooters, soccer... I missed the 2D games with weird concepts that don't imitate reality. Why this attempt to imitate reality, when we can do something totally out of this world? It's like painters would only do hiperrealism, skipping abstract, minimalism, pop art, surrealism and all other techniques. I felt there was lack of originality, of good ideas. Of course I don't claim to know all recent games, and there are probably some good ones out there. But I just didn't do it anymore.

Until last year, when I started finding some online games which I really enjoyed:

• The first one was Desktop Tower Defense. I played a game every day, and got a bit further each time. It was more and more difficult, and I had to adapt my strategy and become faster to go through it. It was an interesting challenge. I liked the fact that a game would last minutes, so you don't need to reserve hours to have some fun.
• Bloxorz is the next game I played and finished. I found it quite addictive, and it's great that you can play levels on differnet days writing down some code on a paper. The aesthetics are nice, and the few sounds present are good.
• I found Magic Pen one of the most original ones, because you have to draw shapes to solve puzzles. The shapes react to physics (gravity, resistance, collisions, etc), so I find it quite educative. What you learn by doing you could apply in the real world.
• Mr Bounce adds a new twist to an old game (Arkanoid). It also uses physics: gravity, collisions, wind. One thing I like is that you play also with the concept of time. You can slow time using the space key to give you some more time to think. But only for a few seconds. The music is also amazing, and evolves together with the difficulty of the levels. Very well done.
• Robokill is probably not so original, but I find very well done and very addictive. You have to keep discovering new rooms, getting better weapons, and becoming faster to go through each level. I find all graphics and sounds excellent. I'm considering paying the 10€ fee to go past the level 4 to do some more fighting :)
• Finally Playauditorium introduces a quite original idea. I discovered this one just a few days ago. You control a shower of particles with some modifiers, to guide those particles so they hit some spots in the screen. You have to keep a flow of particles good enough so the target is fully glowing. At the same time, those targets generate beautiful sounds. Again, I find the sounds excellent, and I really enjoy the difficulty. You really have to move things around to find out the solution. It's also interesting that there are probably many different approaches to solve each level. I managed to solve some of them moving the modifiers all the time with the mouse until I went through.

Some other games I found (not so addictive, but beautiful or original in one way or another) are:

• 99 Bricks is a kind of Tetris, but the objective is to go as high as possible, instead of keeping the thing low.
• Hunted Forever has an original two monochrome aesthetic. From the same people Towering Forever has also a special approach in it's graphic design, and the idea of defending a tree from some evil robots approaching... nature vs machine.
• Cursor*10 also plays with time and mouse cursors. Quite original concept.
• The nice old Simon says.
• And the beautiful, maybe poetic Orisinal games.

None of the above are multiplayer games, and this might be what's so good about some 3D games: that you play with / against other players. But these more abstract games could also be multiplayer... Maybe this is something I should work on myself :)

I found this interesting read about why old games have something special: In Defense of Retro Gaming: A Discussion of Abstraction

Since I don't have a TV and because I was travelling I did not really follow what happened in Greece last weeks.

I found an interesting interview about it here:

www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20039

Sad situation down there. Hopefully the 1/3 from the article gets smaller with time...

Last days Israel has been bombing Palestine and hundreds of people have been killed, over a thousand injured.

Last night I tried to find if some local online newspaper said something about the fireworks that people shoot often dangerously in Berlin on each year change.

What I found was www.bz-berlin.de/BZ/news/2008/12/31/soldat-gilad-seit-920-tagen-gefangener-der-hamas/soldat-gilad-seit-920-tagen-gefangener-der-hamas.html

News about 1 soldier that has been captured by Hamas 920 days ago. That was the main headline. The most important news of day 1, 2009. After days of bombing and killing, children included.

As it mentions here www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3729 , the last events in Gaza sound to me like 'a hundreds eye for an eye'. Other details.

1. Inquiry into the Meaningful Life, or "life of affiliation", questions how individuals derive a positive sense of well-being, belonging, meaning, and purpose from being part of and contributing back to something larger and more permanent than themselves (e.g. nature, social groups, organizations, movements, traditions, belief systems).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_psychology

My Bicycle is easier to park, right at my destination.

It doesn't burn gas producing toxic waste.

I don't have to pay any bicycle taxes.

No expensive insurance.

It doesn't make noise.

It's fun!

“Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” Hermann Goering, 1946

Hello all,

You are cordially invited to the closing of my foto-experiment exhibition 'Neljäs Kerros’

On Friday, November 23rd  2007 from 8 p.m. on.

In Vierter Stock projektraum Berlin, Koloniestrasse 131, Hinterhaus 4th floor.

Exhibitions runs from October 26th to November 25th  2007


Connections: U8 Osloer Strasse, M13 Drontheimerstrasse

www.vierterstock-berlin.com

Would be fantastic to see you there! =)

Last week I was discussing two ideas with my girlfriend.

The first one came to my mind because I'm often thinking how this world we live in is unsustainable (math.berkeley.edu/~galen/popclk.html). There aren't just enough resources for everybody to have so many useless things most people in our societies own. One of the things many people could live without is a car. I see thousands of cars parked everywhere. Parking is so difficult in some cities. Most cars just sit there. The cost thousands of euros / dollars. The have thousands of pieces. They pollute, and a lot of pollution is also thrown into the air when each piece is constructed. And then they end spending most of the time in the street taking space, and are only used a small percentage of the time.

I tend to think different. I try to find how things could work in a different way. That means also thinking about utopical solutions. My idea is that cars should not be owned. But just be for everybody who has paid the 'car' service. Then, if you have paid for it, you could just go in the street and take a car and drive to see the doctor, or the bank, or your work. Later, maybe that car you used is gone, but you just take another car. Probably sounds a bit communist for some people who think OWNING is so important. Well I don't. If we would share things we would need twenty times less production. Because who is able to use the ipod, the pc, the car, the camera, and all your clothes at the same time?

Anyways, my girlfriend did not really like the idea. She found all kinds of problems, and thought it wasn't very useful. Then today, I read this:

"At one point, I was having a conversation with Will [Lark], and we wanted to find a solution to parking," said Vairani. "There's a huge number of cars in parking garages, on the side of the roads. They don't do anything for eight hours a day, and then they go a few miles, and then they don't do anything again. What if people didn't own them? What if they used them and then folded them up and stacked them away?"

That's from someone in MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
www.networkworld.com/news/2007/110807-mit-reinvents-the-wheel-with.html

Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea after all (ok, I didn't talk about folding cars, only sharing them :)

That made me want to post also the second idea for reducing the need for owned cars.

This one can almost be implemented today, without the need for special cars. It's based on people who own cars, who act as taxi drivers while going to their own destination, and requires the use of cellphones with GPRS technology, and a complex centralized server that coordinates thousands of participants.

The participants can be of two types: drivers, and drived people. They are all subscribed to the shared transportation community. Subscribed people are registered. The system knows their name, address and other data (for example ranking), so no unknown people participate in this. If you want to get somewhere and do not have a car, you use your cellphone to tell the system where are you going (typing the address or clicking on a map). The system then automatically notifies the cars that are passing the street you are waiting on, and going in a direction useful for you. Maybe they don't go exactly to your destination. In that case, the will drop you off in the point where your trips go in different ways. Then automatically the system will notify the next car that will take you closer to your destination. The most important thing here is the server, that knows where everybody is going, and can advise drivers to stop for someone, take one or another route, and calculate the trips of thousands of people in all directions at the same time.

If enough people would be in the system, it should be more comfortable than using buses or metros, because you don't have to walk to the stop, or wait much. It could be almost like calling a taxi and being taken to your destination, maybe having to switch in the middle. Drivers could be paid for their service. Those who use the service would pay a monthly fee, but less than the price of taxis.

A ranking system similar to that in ebay or other web sites would give points to drivers and drived people, kind of a trust system. You could rate your driver immediately after or even while the trip is taking place. Maybe an alarm button could send an alert from the cellphone in case something goes wrong (for people to feel safer while driving in someones car).

Why does this idea come from? well, if I go down to the street and look around, I see cars all the time going in every direction, and usually with only one person inside. They could be taking others to their destination without much trouble: only a few seconds to stop for someone. Since the system already knows where people are going to, no time is needed for talking about that. It's all precalculated, and the cellphone using a GPS kind of software can give instructions to the driver about where to stop or about the route.

This system works only if a sufficient number of cars is driving. Maybe it could work only during the day.

I know there are many people against cars being tracked in real time. But it would give a lot of advantages for calculating traffic, routes, and traffic lights, helping avoid traffic jams. It would be necessary for cars participating in this program.

Ok, there my strange idea for today :)

www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php

At Kolonie Wedding.

See vierterstock-berlin.com/projects.html

Using Firefox, GreaseMonkey and www.ipernity.com/apps/gm

Hi, have you heard about the crisis in Burma?

Burma is ruled by one of the worst military dictatorships in the world.  Last month Buddhist monks and nuns began marching and chanting prayers to call for democracy. The protests spread and hundreds of thousands of Burmese people joined in -- but they've been brutally attacked by the military regime.

I just signed a petition calling on Burma's powerful ally China and the UN security council to step in and pressure Burma's rulers to stop the killing. The petition has exploded to over 500,000 signatures in a few days and is being advertised in newspapers around the world, delivered to the UN Security Council, and broadcast to the Burmese people by radio. We're trying to get to 1 million signatures this week, please sign below and tell everyone!

www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma/tf.php?CLICK_TF_TRACK
   
Thank you so much for your help!