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Aug. 5th, 2006 01:24 am
dr_tectonic: (Default)
I had this mini-rant about an editorial I read the other day, but it boils down to this: people do what they are rewarded for doing. If they're not doing what you want them to? It's probably because there's no reward for doing it. Duh.

Also, people will not do the things they are punished for doing, but it's hard to get them to do what you want that way, because you have to associate the punishment strongly and immediately with the action, which is hard, plus they're probably getting a reward for doing whatever it is, and people will try to avoid the punishment. And it's double-hard to punish them for not doing what you want them to do.

Again, duh.

Anyway, I realized it's not worth more verbiage than that, so I'll stop there.

Telecommuted today, which is probably good because I ended up needing to work late on a graphic that's due... well, yesterday, at this point, and working at home meant that I could stop and eat while working late, and didn't need anyone to come pick me up after the shuttle stopped running. Plus I could half-watch the episodes of Roughnecks along with Jerry and Greg.

We finished Last Exile, which was wonderful all the way up to the last episode or so, which was kinda lame and a bit WTF-y. I'm thinking that maybe one of the things we figured out early was supposed to be a big revelation at the end. So my final judgement is that it's well worth the ride, but the destination isn't worth staying at. (Apparently it's not as bad as the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion, though, which I've only seen a handful of episodes so far.)
dr_tectonic: (rat stamp)
We're suddenly to the "I have to get how much done by Thursday?" stage of planning for travel. Ack.

I spent most of my day today doing math to figure out how to twiddle around various parameters to make some things in the hurricane game show up more often and others less often, all while leaving a third set of things untouched. I think I was successful. It feels kind of weird to be plotting histograms to balance a game, but it also feels kinda studly.

Went over to Keith's and talked gaming book this evening. It's coming along, and I think we're going to have a really good working partnership.

We watched the last two discs of Madlax last night. Revelatory, still confusing, ultimately pretty satisfying. There were a couple things that never really got explained, but the things that were explained were sufficiently weird that it made up for it, I think. Still with the power of crazy.
dr_tectonic: (Default)
Oh: we've also been watching a lot of Madlax, an anime by the creators of Noir. We're enjoying it, but the plot is being exceptionally opaque. (I have confidence that all will be explained, but probably not before the last episode.)

I summarize the plot so far thusly: Bullets. Crazy. Girls. Crazy. Bullets girls data explosions intrigue books crazy crazy crazy crazy crazy. Freaky-ass spirit girl. Crazy crazy, crazy. WTF? Crazy.