::A Geek in Korea::

Since I started using Opera’s “Speed Dial” feature (Firefox users can use this extension), I’ve had to pick which nine sites I like sitting in an open blank tab when I fire up my browser. I check, surf, read, skim, and obesses over many more sites than my “9″, but here is a list of the sites I use in my Opera Speed Dial:

1. Popurls. News: This is where I monitor several dozen social news sites at once. If I had digg or reddit in my RSS feeds, I’d be getting HUNDREDS of news stories every day. However, at an aggregation site like popurls, I can skim all the best news aggregation sites quickly and pick out the stories that interest me. This is like a nozzle on a fire hose. There is always more to drink, but this keeps me from drowning.

2. Penny-Arcade Forums: Guilty pleasure: This is where I keep up on games. It’s suffering it’s “school’s out” invasion of bored teenagers at the moment, and isn’t holding my attention like normal. (Shrug).

3. Discovery Channel’s Puzzle Maker: Work: This website has saved my ass so many times when we’ve finished a book, or I need to make a puzzle to entertain the class after a test. This is a total lifesaver.

4. Google Reader: News: I check my RSS feed using Google’s tools because it’s easier to sync, and I hate RSS readers that treat news like emails. When I check a story, if I don’t click it, it should be GONE.

5. A Geek in Korea: Obvious: I’ve got a post in the oven every day of the year barring illness, so I’ve got to keep this site easy to access when inspiration strikes me.

6. Amazing Handwriting Generator: Work: This is for my lowest level, can barely read, can barely write, can’t do any other homework class. These kids get two handwriting sheets to strengthen their wrists before they move up to higher levels.

7. Boggles World ESL: Work: Why reinvent the wheel? There are great worksheets here. A lot of my teaching worksheets come from, or are inspired by something on this site.

8. Io9: Science Fiction: This is where I keep up on stuff related to science fiction, whether it is television, comics, movies or anything else. They don’t update on the weekends, which makes me think that eventually this site will get replaced by something else.

9. This is the “Wild Card” slot. Currently there is a game I posted about a while back. This might switch to Gmail, or iGoogle, MSNBC.com, Youtube, or whatever else I am using at the moment.

Keep in mind this is my “work” related list. It makes sense that almost half the stuff is teaching or material generating sorts of websites.

When you count all the websites I check via RSS and through aggregation, I’m sure I’m checking content on several hundred websites, never mind the 20+ podcasts I work my way through during the week.

Today the students were given new bags from the school. The bags were emblazoned with the school’s logo and phone number. We’re basically paying for the students to be walking advertisements.

We actually got the bags in the school last Friday. My director had told me to float a rumor to expect to buy a bag as soon as I saw them delivered. I had told the students to expect to pay for them as per her directions. The director had told me we’d be charging the students 7000 won each on Friday, and I passed this information on. Students were annoyed that they’d have to buy bags for the school, but they are annoyed about paying for anything.

My director decided today that she’d be giving the bags away instead. She entered the class to explain that the bags were free, but made the students take a pledge. She said that the teachers had come to her and said that it wasn’t fair for the good students to pay for nice bags. The director said that the teachers forced her to compromise. If the students kept doing their work, and did a good job in class, they could keep the bag for free. Otherwise, the students would have to pay for a bag like any of the students joining the school after today. These bags are actually very nice, and I was surprised they were going to be giving them away, lie or not.

The younger students instantly promised that they would try hard. They got their free bags, put them over their heads, huffed the plastic fumes, then dumped their books into the new bags. Any student on the border line between passing and failing was extra earnest in their promise to do well in class.

My worst class is filled with sarcastic near-teens with terrible attitudes. My director came in and did the same “Oh, I wanted to charge you, but the teachers wouldn’t stand for it” deal. These children each had to then promise to be a good student, or pay for the bag. All of the students said they would rather pay for the bag, and produced money from their parents to pay off the director rather than make a promise. They told the director they don’t want to try hard and don’t think they can improve, so they’d rather buy the bag than do more.

The director actually turned down the money and made me come up with crappy reasons for each student as if I was noticing improvement in each student and that if they only tried a little more they would totally be “earning” that bag. The truth of the matter was that the students had all failed their speaking tests earlier in the class, and if I had a choice I would hold back several of them from reaching the next level.

I played along with the little game of false praise, and the students all got their bags for free. I think it sort of blew up in my director’s face when they were more willing to buy off the teacher than actually try harder.

Outside my apartment complex has been a rotating set of trucks promoting Internet service providers. Each week, a different company stops by and tries to entice people to switch their service by promising them free stuff. This week was the service provider we actually used, and you didn’t anything free immediately by staying with the service. They let you sign up for a raffle and would give away prizes on their last day camped out in front of our apartment complex.

We showed up for the raffle along with around twenty or thirty other people. According to the man running the whole thing, the turn out was low enough that if everyone dropped their spouses name into the box, they’d still get to take home something. We did just that, as did everyone else in the crowd.

Some of the people had submitted serveral names of relatives. The only requirement as that they had to have a phone number, and that the person winning could only bring home one prize. I saw one couple that had dropped dozens of names into the raffle. The pregnant woman would shuffle around nervously as she would look at half the numbers, then she would give some of the numbers to her husband who was wearing a denim suit. If they needed to cheat at a free raffle that badly, they probably needed someone much more than we did.

Before the raffle started, we checked out the prizes. There was toilet paper, instant noodles, rice cookers, irons, microwaves, and a few other appliances up for grabs. My wife said, “I hope we win a microwave for my mom. We don’t need much else. As long as we don’t get instant noodles or that steam iron, I’ll be happy.”

I said, “It’s free stuff. Anything we walk away with is more than we had. No reason to complain.”

The raffle was set up so that you had to call out the numbers if you won. They did this so that no one complained it was rigged somehow. There was a volunteer that called out the first number, then when a winner came up to take their prize, they kept grabbing numbers till someone won.

My wife’s number got called for the third or fourth prize. She had won a large box of individually wrapped packets of instant noodles. She laughed and went up to call out numbers. Eventually she got to return to the group when the moved on to steam irons. We were 0 for 1 in our desired takings.

I won the second steam iron. 0 for 2! I went up to collect, then had to draw out numbers. The guy put a bullhorn to my face and told me to shout out the numbers. I paused, not because I didn’t want to speak Korean in front of a crowd, but because three fire trucks were blaring towards us with sirens and lights flashing. They parked right next to the raffle, and no one could hear me on the bullhorn calling out numbers because they were all worried their apartments were on fire. The raffle guy wouldn’t let me leave until the next winner was found, so I had to call out numbers while he tried to keep people’s attention.

Eventually, despite the chaos, someone claimed a prize and I was off the hook. I got to go home with our bundle of unwanted gifts. We’ll give the spicy noodles to my brother in law, and the steam iron is now “wedding present in waiting” for anyone that announces a date in the coming year. I said I didn’t want to complain about a free prize, but next I win a raffle I hope we get something we can use.

So, I had given up on Lost in the middle of Season 2. There wasn’t much of a point to watching the show anymore, since they would air a few episodes, then have LONG stretches where there would be repeats. They didn’t keep it interesting enough for me to continue watching when they started holding back new episodes, so I quit watching. I liked the premise, but I didn’t like it enough to continue watching .

Now I’ve got the first three seasons of Lost on MegaTV on demand. Instead of wating for a new episode to be released, i can watch one I haven’t yet seen and work my way through the episodes one at a time. I’ve got an entire season in the queue at the moment too, so it’ll take several weeks to watch them all. I wouldn’t have bought the DVDs to catch up with the show, but I’ve heard that the fourth season is where Lost returns to form. Seeing as there won’t be new Battlestar Galactica episodes until next year, I’m willing to catch up with Lost while I wait.

My wife and I watched three episodes in the past two days, and I’ll probably finish the second season this weekend if I keep at it. I didn’t hear good things about Lost’s third season until the last few episodes of the season. Hopefully I’ll make it through the third season since I’ve got all of them sitting in front of me waiting to be watched.

So, does anyone still watch Lost?

With the combination of more rain, less walks with the dog, and my wife needing to use the computer for preparing materials for her school, I hadn’t gotten any exercise in the past few days. I was feeling a little lazy just sitting around, so I popped Wii Sports back into the console to see if I could pick up where I left off.

We have been using the Wii since we got our WiFi router, but not as a game only device. While we do have the occasional rounds of Dr. Mario Rx, I also use the Internet Channel while my wife is working to check out Youtube and read the news. I hadn’t played any of Wii Sports since Super Smash Brothers Brawl came out, but Brawl isn’t exercise. Wii Sports can get me moving, and that’s what I was looking for after being trapped in the house all day.

I had been hovering around Pro Rankings when I stopped playing Wii Sports every day. I had crossed the pro threshold for Bowling, but for everything else I am just under the skill level required to beat the pro level challenges. I think the tougher games are more annoying.

Baseball, in particular, is not fun at the pro ranking, since pitching seems random. I never feel like the pitch I choose affects the outcome of the game, yet the computer player’s pitches leave me completely scoreless most games. Why do they hit sliders and sinkers, but I NEVER can. I liked when it was a bunch of fastballs down the middle, and I could hit a few home runs in a game. I might go to a new character just to play low level baseball again. I love baseball modes in training, but I hate pitching.

I appreciate the slightly higher level tennis, and I would play to reach pro status. 90% of the time, the reason why the other team gets an advantage in a game of tennis is because I’ll swing while trying to control the front court player, miss, and have my back court player in the middle of his animation trying to recover his swing from the same motion as the ball goes by. If I don’t control both players, my computer controlled team mate does absolutely nothing, and losing a game because that moron refuses to swing at a ball I am out of position to hit is more infuriating than missing because I was swinging too early and can’t hit with my back court player due to controlling them both with the same action.

Bowling just gets harder and harder to maintain a positive score. I now have to score really high and have multiple strikes or even a turkey to keep from losing points. I can score over my real life average considerably and still lose points. I’m a pro, so I guess strikes are expected, but it’s hard to keep ahead. I’d almost not want to play bowling, because if I mess up I’ll keep dropping for a while before I can regain my scores and skills. I guess I need to go back to training mode for this.

Boxing I still win in the second round. It’s usually just flailing around till I knock out the other player. The only thing that annoys me about Wii Boxing is that I can throw a punch and have it not register, then I can do the same motion again and have it throw a knock out jab. It’s weird. I like the training mode for the best work out.

Golf is still broken and won’t read on my Wii. I got a badly pressed version of Wii Sports and have no way to replace it. Golf looks fun too. (Shrug)

If I keep up my Wii Exercise routine before bed, I might eventually even convince myself that Wii Fit will be a good purchase despite the shipping costs. I really want to give that experience a try, but I’m not able to purchase it from Play-Asia, my normal source for expensive import games delivered to my home.

Once the weather clears up, I’ll probably drop Wii Sports again like I normally do. Walking the dog is usually all the exercise I have time for before work, and the Television is usually tied up during the evening anyway. Seeing as I detest real sports, and I would never go out of my way to do anything but go bowling, me returning to Wii Sports shows that it is a quality game package that is one of the best games on the system.

The “new computer at work” thing isn’t working out for me at all. I’ve started imputting my homework and classwork into the computer before I ever teach, just so I can get out early from work. However, I’ve been forced to use the Korean version of the program for the last two weeks to import all of my attendence and homework.

There are, literally, DOZENS of buttons on EVERY single menu of this program all labeled in Korean I have no idea how to use. I recognize the imput from the shoddy English version, but it’s clear that the Korean version is still in active development while the English version lags far behind. I can’t even DO the work I need to do on the English version anymore.

Since I need to move over to the Korean version to do my work, I’ve had to bother coworkers to find out which of the THIRTY menus I need to use to get my work done. I’ve got notes scattered around my desk with all the various steps for entering grades, updating my class work, entering test scores, grading homework, and everything else I’ve got to do each day.

My director approached me yesterday and asked why I don’t send daily status reports anymore. I replied, “I don’t know how to do that, no one has trained me or told me how. I can’t find the menu, and I don’t know what I should do. You tell me how, and I will.”

She was surprised I didn’t know how to find one of the menu I needed, but when I’ve been briefed on other parts of this database program, I’ve had the secretary say, “Never push THIS button, it will erase EVERYTHING.” This sort of discouraged trial and error and basically put everything on a need to know, need to do basis.

I was also entering all my grading incorrectly, but not one had TOLD me this. I had been giving them a score based on a numerical system in the program, but I was supposed to know the click another checkbox, imput the scores manually, and ALWAYS use a 100 point metric. Again, no one tells me, and I don’t know these things empathically. How was I supposed to know?

No one is angry at me, and I don’t have to do anything about the two weeks of data I had been working on since I switched over to the Korean program. Or, at least I’m NOT GOING to be doing anything about it. I’m a hostile user that has absolutely NO desire to increase my workload on a poorly designed product that makes my life much more difficult.

All my coworkers hate the program as much as I do, but it’s not something you can easily replace by hand. If it does any work to benefit the students or parents, it’s now deemed “the minimal amount you must do from now on.” It’s this creep of duties that always starts to suck the fun out of jobs.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’ve gotten into D&D for the first time with a group of frineds. With casual gaming sessions where the game is more of a story than an actual tabletop game, we hadn’t used much in the way of maps or tabletop grids to plan out how we were navigating our adventure.

However, when one of the other players ran the game for a session, he produced a series of maps that we used to plot and plan our battle strategy. This was a good aid to supliment our adventure, as he could talk about the architecture in detail and have a way to keep it relevant to the game.

I was looking at ways that we could play games that used a map that wouldn’t take much time to set up, or would be possible to do from a distance. I stumbled upon maptool, which seems like the perfect tool for playing D&D over the Internet.

Basically, with maptool, you make a map, drop some tokens onto the field, and use it like a virtual whiteboard. It’s pretty straightforward and very easy to do. I was able to make a map representing one of our adventures in a few hours learning the ropes as I went.I just grabbed some art from rpgmapshare and followed the tutorials.

The cool thing is that the DM can control what the other players sees using layers, so as the players move their tokens down a path, the DM could spring an ambush by revealing some monster tokens that had been hiding behind trees. You can set visibility, so if your characters aren’t looking in the right direction, they won’t be able to see everything. There are all sorts of tools that make the game authentic.With the other tools included, you can roll dice, manage encounters, and do all the other mechanical things required to run a game of D&D over the Internet.

If we were going to play, we’d probably connect to maptool, run Skype or Ventrillo for voice chat, then play by moving tokens around in maptool. There are macros built in to automate all the major feats we’d be required to do.

This would pale to any live game session where we all meet, but this has the advantage of being availble to people that live anywhere in the world. There was already talk of inviting someone to play in our game that lives somewhere else. It would also be easy to keep up with our gaming session if someone moved. I think it’s a tad more work when someone is used to just talking about what happens, but if we ever shift to D&D 4.0 edition rules, where tactical placement of units is built into the game more, it might be important to have as a backup.

Continuing the theme of Post Apocalyptic scenarios that I’ve read or seen are:

Natural Environment in Revolt

The Day After Tommorow, Waterworld, Them!, Night of the Lepus or any other movie based on the premise nature getting revenge. It could also be from a movie that features “Giant Creatures” attacking mankind after any sort of intrusion into their territory, domain, lair, domicile, and or living environment.

Why is it disturbing: It’s nature out of control! Any animal made gigantic and rampaging through a city is supposed to be scary. Also, duh, weather! Oh no!

Would I like to live in this one? I tend to take a detached look at these movies. A lot of this genre is anti-progress, anti-science, and overly alarmist. I don’t find this sort of horror compelling most of the time. As long as the military is still around to take on the rampaging beasts, it wouldn’t be too bad to avoid monster attacks. Just avoid hot spots like Tokyo and New York

Space Aliens

War of the Worlds, V, Kang and Kodos enslaving the human race, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Space Children, Aliens, X-Files, This Island Earth

Why is it disturbing: Things truly alien to us are always scary.

Would I like to live in this one? I’ll explain my answer by explaining the life cycle of an “Alien” from the movie series. An egg is excreted from a queen alien. The vaginal like egg, upon disturbance, peels back and a face hugger is released. The face hugger latches onto it’s prey, who was captured by adult aliens alive, but was then encased in the lair of the queen waiting for a slow painful deal. The face hugger inpregnates the victim by wrapping it’s tail around the creature’s throat and implanting an alien fetus inside the prey’s chest. The fetus eats the inside of the prey, using it’s internal body temperature to grow, taking on it’s DNA. It then burrows it’s way out of the soon to be dead husk, usually by the chest. This new alien quickly begins attacking and capturing victims to be impregnated by more face huggers. It also protects the queen from attack. As an adult alien it is fearless, has acid blood, is cunning and very agile.

So, would I like to live in a world with face hugger aliens? (Shudder) No. Shoot me out the airlock first, I’d rather not have to deal with that idea at all.

Wars with, for, or involving Machines

Whether it’s Terminators, and The Matrix, or Mad Max, and Cylons, machines are going to be at the center of the new world that arises.

Why is it disturbing? The things we create can turn on us.

Would I like to live in this one? I’m computer friendly, but machine incompetent. I’d be the guy who’s car wouldn’t start and would be pillaged and looted by roving bands of fuel pirates in no time.

End of Time

Heat death of the universe, dying stars, and entropy the end of the universe as we know it.

Why is it disturbing: Everything, literally EVERYTHING, is gone.

Would I live to live in this one? By definition, you can’t. This is post-everything.

My Choice

I guess if I had to take my choice of post-apocalyptic world, the “Natural Environment in Revolt” choice seems like the most probable to survive. I’m doing it already. Seeing as climate change is one of the key issues of my generation, there is a possibility that the prospect of living in a world radically altered by weather and forces of nature seems to be something I’m going to have to deal with anyway. Why add any more of a challenge than I already face.

Still, a zombie plague from time to time would make for some interesting stories.

The post-apocalyptic genre is a well-trodden bit of trope for a science fiction fan. Whether the reason for the end of the world is man-made, natural, external, or a result of time, there are plenty of “worlds” that have been explored. I decided to make a list of the Post-Apocalyptic Worlds and rate them, as well as how much I’d like to live in them.

Nuclear Annihilation

Growing up near a nuclear processing facility, the prospect of a apocalypse destroying everything I knew was something never far from my mind as a child. I was paid by the government after a lawsuit for drinking contaminated drinking water as a result of living near a nuclear processing plant. This sort of paranoia about when the bomb is going to fall still casts shadows on my life today living next to North Korea, never knowing when someone is going to throw a rock at that political hornet nest.

I’d say that of any of the ways that the world was going to end, this one was the one was I feared most. The most outstanding work in this sub-genre would have to be Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Loved the Bomb.

Why is it disturbing: Powers beyond your control destroy the world, yet the people that make the decision think it is the best for everyone involved because of some weird rationale.

Would I like to live in this one? One childhood spent thinking about nuclear annihilation was enough. I don’t need to spend the rest of my mutated life worrying about another.

Zombie or Unnatural death like Plague

Rage Virus Fast Zombies? Slow walking Undead? Vampire like creatures? Zombies that explode with contact to pungent kimchi? Non-Zombies from Spain that have kidnapped the president’s daughter? The Evil Dead? The Walking Dead? The Dancing Dead? Shaun of the Dead? Marvel Zombies?

Of course the Zombie meme is something I find interesting. There is no way I would have written a twenty page epic, utterly ridiculous short story about it otherwise. Anyway, growing up in an NRA member’s household, the ONLY way I ever imagined myself in a situation where I would ever want to fire a gun was when I was dropped into a zombie apocalypse and needed to for my survival. Hell, remember how excited I got when I discovered Urban Dead?

Why it is disturbing: Imagine putting a bullet in everyone you know. Then they get back up and keep walking towards you intent on eating you alive.

Would I like to live in this one? Well, blasting zombies and being the last guy on Earth would be fun, for a while, as long as I didn’t know them. I guess if I was given enough time to prepare and could live out my life as a hermit somewhere remote I could learn to enjoy SPAM enough.Still, it’d be very lonely.

Man-made plague

I loved the movie 12 Monkeys. The Andromeda Strain, When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth and I am Legend/Omega Man (too bad, it’s in the zombie list too, deal with it) are also honorable mentions. The book that took this premise to “HOLY SHIT” mode was actually not even fiction. The Hot Zone, about the outbreak of an air-born ape species version of the Ebola virus that happened in the United States is absolutely one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever read.

The Stand is the book I remember encapsulating this world for me. The entire spread of the virus, the march of the survivors, the ways that the world changes to the more immediate surroundings and desperate struggle for survival.

Why it is disturbing: The entire world stands still and everyone you know gets sick and dies. Survivors scrabble to pick up the pieces of a civilization that is literally decaying in front of their eyes. This is one of the saddest worlds to imagine, as people would hold out hope to the bitter end that they could be saved and the disease could be beaten back.

Would I like to live in this one? If I had viral immunity, I’d spend the rest of my life burying the dead. How is that a reward for being a genetic freak of nature?

PART 2: Tomorrow…if the world doesn’t end.

(How awkward must that guy walking into the middle of this taping feel?)

Pygmalion was a man so in love with a statue he made that he prayed to Venus to have his creation turn to life. Venus granted his prayer and he married his creation and had children.

The creators of the documentary “A Perfect Fake” tries to explore modern day Pygmalion in Japan that are trying to create their own representation of modern beauty in various forms. I ran into the Youtube clip above and was absolutely blown away. The man was describing his weird devices as if it was a totally normal thing. They meet people that create virtual 3-D pornography and love dolls to try to explain why an image, or idea of a person can be sought out for as much as a real person.

How is it that an inanimate object begins to hold the feelings of love and companionship these people seek? The people in this movie genuinely have feelings for these dolls. They describe their personalities in human terms, and speak about a doll as if it was a person, even while they pop off the head and package it before going to a photo shoot. One scene had a person comparing the different personalities of his dolls.

“Oh, she’s very expressive. She always has a happy look on her face when we go outside to beautiful places. She looks sad when I take pictures of her in abandoned buildings.”

They show the pictures, and the dolls expression never changes. The man simply projects his feelings of what he thinks she should feel, and this is how he’s constructed this entire relationship with this doll. It’s sad that this man is so intensely lonely that he comes home early from work to spend time with a life size doll. He’s made an entire world where she is the center of his attention.

What kind of person avoids normal relationships for that of a doll or a virtual sex partner? Most of the people said they liked the idea of having a partner that would never age, but also was perfectly submissive. Someone they could “possess” completely. Someone that would never say “no”. Some of the people expressed regret that they were shut-ins that would rather deal with a doll than a real person, but others embarrassed their new found freedom to show their relationships as what they could now consider “normal”.

Why do people willing to love inanimate objects still seek something resembling the female form? Most of the people said that the form itself wasn’t that important. A designer said that the dolls, if real, would be grotesque, but that there is something in their look, or their design, that allowed the owners to explore a feeling they couldn’t otherwise express. They know how they are, but wish to remain as pure and be as unchanged by time as the doll. They look to the doll as a anchor that will always support them and never leave.

The documentary is full of naked non-human forms, and isn’t safe for work. This movie has one of the highest ratios of WTF?! scenes ever. It was rather awkward walking down the street with it loaded on my Cowon D2 trying to make sure no one saw me watching a movie with Japanese guys talking about making penistron devices for virtual sex over the Internet. I recommend it, but it’s really weird.