Saturday, December 7, 2013

Self


Live for yourself. If you always conform to others' expectations, you'll betray yourself. You'll lose your integrity. Integrity isn't doing what other people say is right; it's doing what you know is right. Of course, if you know nothing, you can do nothing, and integrity is impossible for you. So know what you believe; if you believe nothing, seek something. Find out who you are. Honest fidelity to your true self is powerful; other standards of conduct can only create facades.

Friday, November 29, 2013

Enhance


We play games in real life. Many people think that gaming is divorced from reality, but in reality, life and games exist side by side. Exceptional games can motivate their players to behave in exceptional ways. Whether that behavior is good or bad depends on the game and the way players engage in it. Wandering thoughtlessly through a game is like zoning out in a chemistry laboratory. Attentive people can accomplish marvels in either place, but careless fools will generate catastrophes. So remember to let your virtue control the game, or the game may empower your vice.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Solo


We need a-social media. A-social people might be an anomalous minority, but they do exist. Such people are source nodes or orphaned nodes in the graph of society. They maintain this status by refusing incoming connections. Social tools exist to improve reachability in the social graph; they add edges in every possible place. A-social people don't allow others to build edges to their nodes, so they obtain nothing from social media.

Social media is a major use of the internet. Social people spend long hours on the internet using social media. The computers and protocols people use, however, are developed by people who tend to be a-social. A lot of engineers and technical people find math and machines more interesting than people. A lot of them enjoy many aspects of the internet and computers but eschew the social ones. If the entire internet were converted to an inherently social environment, its core developers might feel out of place and stop working on it. Don't write people off merely because they live in their own private world and don't use your favorite social sites; they might be the key people who make such sites possible.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Social Engineering

All food should taste the same. Most restaurants cater to a miniscule audience: the one that likes their food. This is quite unfair, as people should be able to go anywhere they want and enjoy themselves.  Restaurants should cease their foolish tricks and cater to all comers. Unfortunately, this change would crush most establishments. They simply could not afford to provide such a variety of food. To fix this, we must decrease the variety; to ensure it works for even the smallest restaurants, we should eliminate variety entirely. This, though, is absurd. People would be dismayed if everything they liked disappeared along with the things they disliked. We should probably leave well enough alone.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Power Attack


If you miss, roll more dice. In fact, just get a bucket of dice and roll them all at once. Pick out the ones with the best numbers, and proceed with your attack. This method works admirably for defense and trap checks as well. Design a lore friendly “magic bag of dice” for your party leader, and you'll be unfailingly prepared. Serious RPG fans might disapprove. Open source developers, though, embrace this approach. Granted, they've modified it a bit; they make other people roll all the dice. Still, the final step is the same. Keep sifting until you score a critical.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Fluffy


Learn to speak cloud. The cloud is everywhere and nowhere, and people try to do everything with it. They mold it into whatever they want it to be. Some people even store their brains in the cloud. All their communications are routed through the cloud. Knowledgeable cloud-speakers are the only ones who can reach them. A cloud-based system for translating into cloud would be good, but to really understand cloud culture, you have to go native. Live long enough among the cloudians, and they shall accept you and teach you their ways. You can then make an excellent living as a guide or translator. You could also be a cloud anthropologist. Don't forget your roots, though, or you'll be trapped in cloud land forever.