Augsburg (more information in German) is among the German cities with the oldest documented history of continuous settlement. Orginally founded in 15 AD as a Roman army camp, it developed into a provincial capital called Aelia Augusta and later Augusta Vindelic[or]um. The town appears to have remained fully populated throughout the later transition from Roman … Continue reading “Augsburg Impressions”
Avoid WordPress Export
WordPress comes with a built-in Export feature that saves some or all posts and related metadata to an XML file, supposedly as a backup or for transfer to another WordPress installation. Unfortunately this feature has two glaring flaws. Export scrambles HTML markup! I’m using the raw HTML editor to write my posts, so I know … Continue reading “Avoid WordPress Export”
Some Windows Histories
For some reason, this year everyone decided to publish extensive articles on the history of Microsoft Windows and related technologies. Reading all of them will probably take you a month but they are quite informative, so I wanted to collect them here in case you missed some or all of them. Doing Windows at the … Continue reading “Some Windows Histories”
Altmühl Dinosaurs
The picturesque valley of the river Altmühl, crossing Bavaria from west to east where it joins the Danube, features a number of limestone quarries which continue to reveal large amounts of Jurassic fossils. The Dinosaur Park Altmühltal, located halfway between Munich and Nuremberg near the town of Denkendorf, has a number of them on display … Continue reading “Altmühl Dinosaurs”
Pillars of Eternity
Released in 2015, Pillars of Eternity was inspired by Bioware’s classic Baldur’s Gate games which revived isometric RPGs in a pausable real-time format, followed by other Black Isle Studios titles based on the same Infinity Engine, in particular Planescape: Torment. For lack of a willing publisher Pillars of Eternity was originally crowdfunded on Kickstarter. Its … Continue reading “Pillars of Eternity”
Newspapers Still Keep Shrinking
The recent massive layoffs at the New York Daily News prompted me to revisit the ongoing massacre at American newspapers and other news media. First, here are a couple of articles to quantify the damage. Bureau of Labor Statistics (1990–2016): newspaper employment shrank from 455,000 to 183,200 and books plus periodicals from 232,200 to 155,100, … Continue reading “Newspapers Still Keep Shrinking”
Artificial and Human Intelligence
Google Alpha Go’s victories over the world’s top-ranked human Go masters made headlines recently, just like IBM Deep Blue’s victories over world chess champion Garry Kasparov twenty years ago. The two programs were based on quite different paradigms: Deep Blue used the brute-force tree search that’s still common in computer games, whereas Alpha Go combined … Continue reading “Artificial and Human Intelligence”
Skytrain to Nowhere
Brandon Adamson’s Skytrain to Nowhere is an 80-page book of what he calls “free-form poetry.” If that term usually causes you to run very fast in the opposite direction, don’t worry. To be sure the writing is carefully crafted in poetry style, but never overwrought or incomprehensible. Indeed most poems would pass as (very) short … Continue reading “Skytrain to Nowhere”
Oppo Obituary
After almost exactly 4.5 years, my Oppo BDP-105D (a monumental audiophile Blu-ray player) has died a heat death. The player would shut off spontaneously after about two hours of operation, then when turned back on would shut off again after only 15 minutes or so, unless it got enough time to cool off. Disappointing for … Continue reading “Oppo Obituary”
Algorithms for Computer Games
Algorithms and Networking for Computer Games — Jouni Smed & Harri Hakonen, Wiley 2017 (2nd ed.), ISBN 978-1-119-25976-3 As the title indicates this book comprises two major parts, with about 220 pages presenting a broad variety of general algorithms, and another 70 pages on architecture and algorithms for networked games. The first part covers just … Continue reading “Algorithms for Computer Games”