Yitz aka Isaac Wasileski (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} agnoster) wrote,@ 2009-03-20 22:06:00 |
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Important business!
So, I'm officially unemployed now and I'm moving back to Berlin end of May. But that's not why I'm writing my first post in a long long time. It's because there is a pressing question to answer: What do I name my new laptop? (Work took the other one, much to my surprise. I thought it was complimentary!)
There are some good contestants, but first, a roughly-chronological list of computers I've named thus far:
Paladin
Hal
Shiva
Marvin
Jezel
Kelvin
Spork
Jubal
Hiawatha
Knork
Azrael
Looking over the list now, I realize my server names tend towards the more whimsical end of the spectrum and my personal computers to the epic. So, I'm mulling over options, and would like to hear any thoughts you have on the subject. Zarathustra and Gilgamesh are my current favorites, but not so much so that they might not be unseated by a fresh young upstart, so the conclusion is far from foregone!In related news, now that I'm unemployed I'm going to try working on a personal project that is audacious enough to keep me busy for a while but not so much so that anyone would actually care if I do it or not. The basic overview is... card games, I like them (in particular I've had a healthy dose of chinese poker (technically Big Two) injected into my week thanks to Daniela visiting). So, like everything else I like, I want to analyze, formalize, and program it. But of course simply writing a program that allows me to play chinese poker with other people I'm not in the same room as would be too simple*, so instead what I really want to do is develop a way of expressing the rules of any card game (played with standard playing cards - have to concede to at least one constraint) in a formal language that's simple enough for non-programmers to write. Then, have a website where users can play the games I and others create, with scorekeeping and tracking popular games and whatnot. Oh, and of course you should be able to play over facebook. And iPhones. And possibly carrier pigeons. Bonus points if I can establish a peer-to-peer mode that doesn't require a trusted server to "deal" (though something tells me information theory makes this impossible with any card game where opponent's hands should be secret from each other).
* - Doable in finite time, and thus not interesting enough
So, I'm officially unemployed now and I'm moving back to Berlin end of May. But that's not why I'm writing my first post in a long long time. It's because there is a pressing question to answer: What do I name my new laptop? (Work took the other one, much to my surprise. I thought it was complimentary!)
There are some good contestants, but first, a roughly-chronological list of computers I've named thus far:
Paladin
Hal
Shiva
Marvin
Jezel
Kelvin
Spork
Jubal
Hiawatha
Knork
Azrael
Looking over the list now, I realize my server names tend towards the more whimsical end of the spectrum and my personal computers to the epic. So, I'm mulling over options, and would like to hear any thoughts you have on the subject. Zarathustra and Gilgamesh are my current favorites, but not so much so that they might not be unseated by a fresh young upstart, so the conclusion is far from foregone!In related news, now that I'm unemployed I'm going to try working on a personal project that is audacious enough to keep me busy for a while but not so much so that anyone would actually care if I do it or not. The basic overview is... card games, I like them (in particular I've had a healthy dose of chinese poker (technically Big Two) injected into my week thanks to Daniela visiting). So, like everything else I like, I want to analyze, formalize, and program it. But of course simply writing a program that allows me to play chinese poker with other people I'm not in the same room as would be too simple*, so instead what I really want to do is develop a way of expressing the rules of any card game (played with standard playing cards - have to concede to at least one constraint) in a formal language that's simple enough for non-programmers to write. Then, have a website where users can play the games I and others create, with scorekeeping and tracking popular games and whatnot. Oh, and of course you should be able to play over facebook. And iPhones. And possibly carrier pigeons. Bonus points if I can establish a peer-to-peer mode that doesn't require a trusted server to "deal" (though something tells me information theory makes this impossible with any card game where opponent's hands should be secret from each other).
* - Doable in finite time, and thus not interesting enough
