Book Review: Lauren Ipsum

Lauren Ipsum is a children's book with a unique take on a well-worn theme.

The book centers around a girl, Lauren Ipsum, who finds herself lost in a strange land, and then goes through a series of adventures while trying to find her way home. In this way, its not unlike Alice in Wonderland or countless others.

What sets the book apart is that all of the characters and challenges she faces along the way are all logic puzzles and computer programming concepts. She encounters a travelling salesman, for example; or needs to formulate instructions to have some minions accomplish a task. In this sense, as its billed, it is a book about computers without any computers in it.

On the negative side, I found the characters to be a little thin and underdeveloped, but perhaps this is normal for a children's book.

The real test is whether this captures kids and entertains them while perhaps also teaching them a thing or two. I have a vacation coming up during which I plan on reading this to the kids. I'll post an update regarding how it goes after that's done.

[Update: I read this to the boys (mine and their cousins) over vacation, and the LOVED it. The older boys were trying to get ahead and outguess Lauren when she was faced with a challenge, or were trying to solve the math bit in it ahead of the book. So, highly recommended!]

 Lauren Ipsum

Omegathon Junior!

The twins turned 8 recently and each wanted their own sleepover birthday party. Tom wanted his videogame themed, so I was put in charge. Since he had his circle of friends had all professed being SO awesome at videogames, I decided to put this to the test. I hope the penny arcade crew will forgive me for totally ripping off the Omegathon, their awesome contest held at Pax.

I wanted to have games that were easy to pick up and play, had play sessions under 5 minutes (because 5 minutes * 6 games * 6 kids, plus time for practice sessions, was going to be all time would allow for), and most importantly, covered a range of periods of gaming history.

We played 6 games, and the 6 boys were awarded between 1 and 6 points depending on their rank on each game. Final round was worth double points, and then the points were totalled.

Here's an account of what we put together. It was a TON of fun, the boys had a blast, and it was easy and inexpensive to put together.

Round 1: Pong

Well, to be accurate, it was "single player handball" on an APF TV Fun machine, my first game system that dad bought back in ~1978. It has several game modes, including a single player "handball". Since the rheostate on my player2 side was giving me trouble, we went with singple player, and then the kids competed to see who could score lowest in one minute of gameplay.

Round 2: Ladybug (on Colecovision)

The kids *loved* this game despite none of them having seen it, and especially loved discovering the secrets to the game (bonuses/extras/specials with the color changes over time, etc).

Round 3: Time Pilot (on Xbox360)

Moving forward, I picked this one because it's easy to pickup and fast to play. Also comparable in ways to Geowars, which we'd play later on.

Round 4: Peggle (on iPad)

Most of the boys had played this in one form or another. Another hit.

Round 5: Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved

They liked this game too, but only one of the boys had played it before and had somewhat of an advantage as a result. Maybe could have picked something obscure.

Round 6: Fruit Ninja Kinect

I left this one for last as I knew it'd be a double-point round, and the big push for the finish, and thus a chance to work off all the birthday cake sugar. It was hysterical to see them all pouring every last ounce of energy into the game's final seconds. (I'd post pics, but by this point kids were in their PJs and some parents might be paranoid about half-naked pics of their kids being posted).

Results:

In the end, Tom and one of his friends tied for the lead position.

All the kids were given trophies, which Alisa ordered a couple weeks ahead of time and which were dirt cheap. Here's a pic of one of them.

Anyhow, I hope this gives some other parents an idea to do the same sort of thing. The kids were already talking rematch at next year's Omegathon Junior when they went home the next day.

Night at the Museum

BoingBoing has this post explaining how the London Natural History Museum offers sleepovers for kids in groups of 5 or more (plus guardian) where they get to roam the museum's dinosaur skeletons and other wonders at night by flashlight.

OK, check! World, STILL AWESOME!

Book Review: Media Meltdown

When I was a kid, I don't know exactly what age, maybe 10, my dad had a conversation with me about interpreting the news. I don't remember exactly what precipitated it, I think it was a newspaper headline that he didn't agree with. He asked me to think about who might have written the story and why, what they were trying to get me to beleive, and whether there might be another point of view. I don't remember the subject of the piece, but the conversation itself was pivotal for me, and I always questioned media messages after that.

In recent years, I've wondered at what age I should be having that same conversation with my own kids. The twins are 6 now and they are certainly exposed to a lot. I've heard Tom telling his sister that "batteries are not included" with a toy, or that she might not be able to buy something because "supplies are limited" (shudder).

I don't think it's something that you specifically sit them down for a talk ("Now kids, let me grab my pipe and slippers and talk you about the birds and the bees") but rather plant seeds of questions for them to ask themselves as they consume media, play with toys and games, etc.

Given that I've been asking myself these questions in recent months, my ears perked up when I caught wind of the following book:

Media Meltdown is a comic book adventure about some small-town kids that witness a crime and attempt to bring the perpetrators to justice. Along the way, they learn about media, advertising, and how it is changing with the advent of the Internet. It's a short, fun comic that I'd highly recommending adding to any 8-15 year old's diet.

I'm going to see if the twins like it. I fear it may be a little too complicated for them just now. I'll post an update on how its received.

Playstructure project

Well, it's November, and I've almost wrapped up the 'summer project' play structure. It was a sunny day yesterday so I snapped a couple pics.

An off-the-shelf structure wouldn't work because we were building on an incline and over a retaining wall, so we decided to do something custom. As usual, this led to my getting a bit carried away.

Original rough concept in Sketchup:


Same, with rough orientation in situ:


Final product (still need a few pieces of trim, a pirate flag for the mast, etc):


From the downhill side (still needs a few pieces of 'hull' planking), showing slide and climbing wall:

I'll post some more pics after getting the last bits of trim done (hopefully this year!!)

This one time, at (rock) band camp...

...I shoved a plastic guitar in my....

So I got some spam that the Power Chord Academy, a kind of 'rock n roll summer camp' targeting the venn diagram intersection of 'aspiring rock stars' and 'troubled teens with well-to-do parents', is now adding a summer camp for aspiring fake rock stars. 

It's summer camp for Rock Band and Guitar Hero!

I'm actually supportive of a video game summer camp, if it were either spent making them, or thinking about and discussing them. But a Rock Band camp? At a camp where all the other kids are going to be playing real guitars, smoking real weed and one would imagine trashing their cabins/dorms? I dunno... sounds like bloody-nose camp!

I kid, I kid. Seriously, it's... interesting. I can't decide whether I think this is a good or a bad thing. 

Fantastic Distraction

I showed the twins (aged 5) Fantastic Contraption, and they LOVED it. Tom especially so. I was surprised how many levels they made it through without any help from dad.

I feel far better about letting them spend three straight hours playing with this than I do about a 30 minute span on the infernal webkinz site.

[On a related note, I can't beleive how quickly the kids pick up computer navigation skills. The other day Tom told his mom in the car, "when we get home, I'm going to look on the computer for some crafts to do because it's a rainy day.". Alisa asked him how to do that and he replied, singing like the Yahoo jingle, "GOO-GLE!". She then asked him what that was, and he answered "you type w-w-w-DOT-COM-DOT-GOOGLE, and then type in the box what you want to find. I'm going to type 'kids crafts'". Holy crap. Probably time I have a talk with them about what not to type into a browser, etc.]

That's "Mister" to you.

Like all parents, I want to ensure my kids get a proper education. I believe that starts with a solid foundation based on the classics.

Which is why we took a break the other day from the never-ending Lego Star Wars gaming to introduce Thomas and Jennifer, aged four and a half apiece, to the classic Pac Man franchise. This way I could show them what games were like when I was their age (actually about 3 times their age when Pac Man came out, but I digress).

We started with Ms Pac Man because it's more forgiving. Then we moved on to the original Pac Man, at which point my daughter corrected me.

"Daddy, it's not Pac Man. It's MISTER Pac Man."

Tom likes eating ghosts. Jenny is interested in the part (on 360) when she is presented with a tally of which fruit she has eaten, citing that fruit is very healthy and that both Ms and Mr Pac Man will avoid getting sick as a result.

Centennial Middle School Talk

I gave a talk yesterday at Centennial, a middle school out east of Portland, about careers in the games industry. I'd given a talk at the same school when I last lived here, and it was once again a blast.

The format changed some. Last time, they rotated 5 groups of 25-ish through for a 15 minute presentation each. This time, we got the whole group of 150 kids in one room, and did a 30 minute talk followed by 30 minutes of Q&A.

[BTW, if you are one of the kids I spoke to, you here's the list of resources I posted last time on 'game development for beginners'. It's a little out of date, and I'll be updating it later today, but if you are eager, that should get you started.]

Now for everyone else, here's some observations from the talk:
- Number of kids out of 150 that play games: 148. There were two outliers, both girls, for what that's worth.
- Number of teachers that play games: 3 of 6.
- Number of students that even *heard* of Space Invaders (I'd been asked what the first game I played was): ~1/3.
- Games about which I was asked the most questions: Grand Theft Auto (3,4), Halo. Remember, these are 12-13 year olds. ESRB, you still have work to do!

It's worth noting that the socio-economic split between the students is pretty big. Some are from newer development areas and are lower-middle class or slightly better off than that. On the other hand, 50% of the kids in the room are on free or subsidized lunches. The teacher I was working with pointed out that while many have computers at home, most are very old, and many are not connected to the Internet (as she put it, "many of them are used to having the phone cut off in the last week of the month").

As well, the school reflects this. "Non-essential" courses (e.g. computer science, *ahem*) have been cut from the curriculum. They have computers in the school, but they are almost exclusively used to administer standardized testing. Kids get very little time on PC's to actually explore/create/experiment. The school has one Smartboard which was paid for via a grant. Contrast this with the public school I saw in an affluent part of Redmond and blogged about here.

Despite this, I was getting some awesome questions. Some examples:
- How does the Wii do motion tracking?
- How do the chips in a game console differ from the ones in my computer?
- How does a game being connected to the Internet (cited Live as example) change the process of creating it?
- How do motion-capture rigs work? (was phrased as "those suits with the ping-pong balls on them")

Also lots of pragmatic questions about how much money will you make in job X or job Y.

A few questions were a little more basic. My fave was this three-part question from a young lady in the audience:

"How long have you been in this business?" (My answer: "15 years")
"How old were you when you started?" (My answer: "24")
"How old are you now?" (My answer: "You just wrote a math problem!")
Another kid then cried out "You're 40!?!".
*sigh* "Close."

Other favorite moment: A number of kids were asking for autographs afterward (why? I don't get it either). The last kid that came up as I was packing up asked for one as well and I asked why on earth he wanted it. His answer? "I've never met anybody OLD before... that plays games, and I want to prove to my parents that you exist!".

Anyhow, it was a blast and I'd highly recommend to others that they do similar things in their community.

Letting Toddlers Play With Knives

This great talk from Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, is a good watch for anyone raising kids in today's overprotective society.

It really resonated with me. (Spoiler warning: Watch the video before reading the rest of this post. If the link below is broken, watch here)






Of the 6 things he encourages us to let our kids do, my parents -my father in particular - encouraged *all* of them.

1. Play with Fire: I was allowed and even encouraged to do so, including building my own rockets. He didn't even intervene in my making my own gunpowder until one of my rockets actually worked and almost knocked my neighbor off his roof when an ill-timed flight coincided with his choice of days to re-shingle.
2. Own a pocket knife: My dad gave me both a folding pocket knife as well as a sheathed deer-bone handle boyscout knife that had been his when he was a kid. As Gever says, it was a universal tool. We whittled, carved, disected bugs, skinned squirrels (sorry peta people), peeled bark, made conkers, and a thousand other things with them.
3. Throw a spear: I did. When we lived in South Africa i got one. Dad also bought me a bow (not a little plastic one - a fiberglass one that could put an arrow a good inch into a maple), a slingshot, and a pellet gun.
4. Deconstruct appliances: I was always allowed to take apart any device that was going in the trash or was otherwise non-functional. I was given full access to dad's shop including all power tools from as early as I can remember. I beleive at around 9 or 10 I recall being told to "be extra careful" with the electric jigsaw.
5. Break the DMCA: We didn't have it. But dad DID encourage questioning authority and WHY systems were structured the way they were (including the law).
6. Drive a car: I got to sit on dad's lap and drive the car. I also was allowed to build or acquire a fair number of two or four-wheeled contraptions that had internal combustion engines, even though I was too young to legally drive them.

Anyhow. My wife and I have had numerous conversations about 'risky' activities, that usually go along the lines of "what age is it ok for him/her to be doing this/that?", and I often feel that we as a society are far too protective of our kids, and that this may be doing it's own kind of harm. This talk really helped crystalize that sentiment for me.

(Update: Fixed link in post)

Snow Day

It snowed last night, and again this afternoon. Which is fun for kids... and their snowmen brethren!

Its also fun for parents, when they know a flight to Honolulu is just hours away!

Long night...

Not one, not two, but all three kids have come down with some kind of bug. All three have been vomiting on and off for the past few hours. Have changed many sheets, have done much laundry, have not done much off my to-do list this evening.

*sigh*. Parenthood.

Sticks and stones...

..."and falling off the swings" perhaps should have been added to that kids rhyme. :-(

The fun continues...

So first day of "semi-working semi-vacation", my laptop goes belly up and I spend the day trying to get MS canada to get me a replacement.

On day two, my 3-yr old daughter Jennifer took a flying leap off the swing set trying to save a carebear from certain death and busted her clavicle in the process. Poor little thing.

So half of day one spent in the MS Canada IT department, half of day two spent in the emergency room.

Fun.