I was teaching first-year writing at the University of Notre Dame. The room was lit only by the snatches of dull, grey light from the two small windows and the glow of my students' monitors. They were working on their papers in class. I was there to help them when they had questions. How to address comments I'd written on earlier drafts, how to cite something, how to prove their point sufficiently or transition from one thing to the next.

If I'm working on something, I don't do interruptions well. So, I had nothing to work on. My job was to be available to them the instant they needed something. So, I perused my favourite toys website: RTM. There, in full colour, glorious in a way I'd never seen any other toy:

Where the Wild Things Are

I gasped. A student walked up for help, saw my expression and was puzzled.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Where the Wild Things Are action figures."

Blank stare.

I was appalled. How could anyone not know this book? Not know Maurice Sendak's work?

The day before Spring Break, I brought the figures and the book in to class. I ended class early and told my students, "you are free to go if you want. But if you've never seen this book before, I hope you'll stay."

We sat down on the floor in the front of the classroom, for all the world like an overgrown kindergarten class, and I read to them about Max and about the wild things. We roared terrible roars and gnashed terrible teeth. We rolled terrible eyes and showed terrible claws.

We sailed back over a year

and in and out of weeks

and through a day

and into the night of our very own rooms

where we found our supper waiting

and it was still hot.

And some of my students rolled their eyes, a few left, but a bigger chunk of them than I had expected at a school where the students prided themselves on being above anything "childish," a lot of them stayed and enjoyed the book. Some for the first time, some quite obviously for the millionth time as they mouthed most of the words along with me.

A brilliant, dark light has gone out of the universe and we are the poorer for it.

Sorry, blog software still uninstalled, so no comments. You can hit me up through the contact form at the top if you want to let me know what you think. I'll manually publish comments if you indicate you want me to do so.

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:35 PM

Made primarily from Sculpey, includes a light pack inside, glow-in-the-dark paint inside and the bodies of both butterflies are glow-in-the-dark Sculpey.

Sorry, blog software still uninstalled, so no comments. You can hit me up through the contact form at the top if you want to let me know what you think. I'll manually publish comments if you indicate you want me to do so. Click to look.

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:35 PM

So. Movable Type is completely removed from my server until I figure out what's going on with the hacking situation. That means comments and search are kaput for now. I spent about 7-8 hours Sunday trying to get all the files cleaned up, but since I don't know how they're getting in, I'm not going to screw around and leave that as an opening. Kinda scratching an itch with a big-ass sledge-hammer, but there it is.

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:35 PM

The summer I was seven, we went to Disney World, back in the day of coupon books. I saved two coupons for the most important things I could think of. One was for Space Mountain, the other was for the Hall of Presidents. Yes, I have always been that much of a nerd. I wanted to see the robotic Abraham Lincoln, the man I thought was the coolest president the U.S. had ever seen.

No one else, not Grandma, not Grandpa, not Mom, not baby sister, wanted to waste a ticket on the Hall of Presidents and after much pestering, my extremely overprotective mother told handed me a map of the park, showed me where it was and sent me off alone.

I admit I was somewhat terrified to be going alone through this big park. It was the height of Stranger DANGER! and my mother was always going on about how we had to be careful to not get kidnapped.

But hey. Sometimes you have to take a stand and just decide not to be afraid. After all, Abraham Lincoln did it. He stood up and was not afraid and he freed the slaves. All I had to do was walk across Disney World by myself. Piece of cake.

I found the pavilion with robotic presidents and slid out of the Florida heat into the air conditioning. I was stunned that hardly anyone was there. I took a seat in the back half of the theatre, but close enough that I could get a good look at these robots.

And I waited.

It was kind of scary being there all alone. I had too much time to think. But I was tough. No one would bother me. I sat up a little straighter.

A rustling behind me. I slumped down, scared all over again. Looked behind me. It was a 20-something young couple. Black. I froze.

You see, my father is a horrible bigot, a terrible racist. Big proponent of the Klan.
And my mother was always terrified of anyone who was different. Well-known for locking her car door when a black man stood across the street as she drove.

And both the young man and the young woman smiled at me. That's all. They didn't say a word. They didn't make a motion. They smiled.

And I relaxed completely. I was here to see President Lincoln, after all. The man who freed the slaves. The man who told all of the U.S. that people are people regardless of colour. I was not afraid of a young couple just because their skin was dark and mine so white it practically glows in the dark.

I smiled back at them. We all settled in to watch the show.

They were gone by the time the show was over. I never did have an opportunity to speak to them.

And all this week, I've been thinking about Trayvon Martin. And I desperately want the chance to smile at him. To tell him he has nothing to fear from people whose skin is different than his any more than I did.

Except we all know that's not true.

I want to tell Trayvon Martin that wearing a hoodie shouldn't be a scary thing to anyone. It's a fucking lightweight jacket, for crying out loud. Where's the harm in a piece of clothing?

I am sick that anyone thinks they can kill someone else for wearing the wrong clothes. I don't care if that's a yarmulke, a hijab, a hoodie, a short skirt, or a Notre Dame jacket.

I am sick that any 250lb man in Florida can claim that he was so scared of the threat posed by a 140lb lanky boy just because he wore a hoodie and had darker skin that he thought he was within his rights to pull a gun and kill the boy.

I am sick that he might not be put in jail for this murder.

I am sick that people defend George Zimmerman's actions. There is no defense for that even if the stand your ground law might protect him from jail time.

I am sick when I think if a 17 year old black boy had pulled a gun on a 28 year old possibly Hispanic dude with a rather anglo last name, he'd have been tossed in jail regardless of what reasons he had for pulling the gun, up to and including self-defense. It would have been beat and arrest first, prove your innocence or extenuating circumstances later.

This whole damn mess makes me sick.

And the jackasses who claim there's no racial component to any of this? Pull your head out of the sand and look around.

Really look at what the Tea Party is proclaiming. Really look at what the FOX News drones are doing with their language and have been for years.

Really look at the mess we are in.

Really open yourself to what H. Samy Alim has to say.

It shouldn't be this way. It just shouldn't.

.

I'm really sorry the comments are still off. Still haven't been able to find a non-captcha way of dealing with the spam. I'll keep looking. (Seriously, over 500 spam comments in less than 8 hours was bad. Was 14 hours before I realized it and could get them turned off and I had to delete well over 1500 comments from the database.)

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:35 PM Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Struggles | | Stumble

Comments will probably remain down for a few days whilst I find a new Turing plug-in to prevent spam. But, search should work again ...

And one day maybe I'll publish one of the several post I have brewing.

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:14 PM Blog | | Stumble

Due to a need to update the blog software and a lack of time, the Red Monkey blog will be down for a few days. Comments won't work and I'm not sure that anything other than basic navigation will work. Hope to be back up by March 15.

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:24 PM Blog | | Stumble

The touchstone for a popular mobile app has, in the last two years, become Rovio's Angry Birds. Mention that game to most iOS developers and you'll either see Angry Birds induced anger froth forth, or an earnest explanation as to why their app will be even bigger than that.

Introduced December 11, 2009, the app seems a ridiculously simple concept, and on the face of it, it doesn't sound like much. Some green pigs have stolen the eggs of a variety of birds (Green Eggs and Ham, anyone?). You control the birds and you fling those birds via a stationary slingshot at structures of stone, glass and wood that the pigs have built around them. The birds either strike the pigs directly and destroy them or they knock down bits of the structures on top of the pigs and destroy them that way. A level can be completed (or failed) in well under a minute.

That's it.

The game has succeeded because while the characters and visual design are not the greatest, they are cute and reasonably well rendered and displayed. The extreme number of levels (and Rovio is constantly adding more levels at no additional cost to the player) and speed at which levels can be played are key points to its repeat playability. In addition, Rovio taps into the competitive players and the completionist players by including levels of winning. You can go on to the next screen if you kill all the piggies, but ... to unlock certain levels you have to have gotten a score high enough to earn you three stars. But, that's not all. Many levels have golden eggs hidden in them. Some are easily visible, some are not. You can play the game and succeed without ever hitting a golden egg, but to be competitive or completionist, you have to go back through and hunt down the golden eggs as well. For most people, new levels come out before they can complete all levels, including golden eggs and the three star level.

The game is constantly enticing players back with new levels or by social media (hearing about a golden egg for example).

Another level of engagement is the game physics. Honestly, the game seems to personify the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. The game physics are reasonably reliable, although if you talk to anyone who plays the game regularly you'll inevitably hear frustration that "there is NO WAY a damn pig would survive having four stone blocks on top of it" or "there is no way in HELL that piece of wood would not fall down in real life. Don't the game makers understand basic physics?"

The game physics, I have grown to believe despite my occasional frustrations, are this way very much on purpose. Players become convinced that they are "almost there" and if they "just do this a little bit differently" it will work. In addition, adding some random element to the physics means that no two players are getting precisely the exact same results on levels. I know I have attempted to count pixels before releasing my bird - expecting that if the physics are completely consistent, I could expect that bird to land in the same spot every time. That doesn't happen. It might be close, but it's never exactly the same. I suppose we could chalk up this random element as the air speed we can't see or feel, but it's become one of the elements I believe makes the game most addicting because you can do the same thing over and over again and it's not insanity - you don't get exactly the same results. It's not so far as to be inconsistent - it's small variances. I find this important to note since inconsistency will frustrate players and cause them to reject the game.

Combining the game physics with the rapid level plays, the plethora of levels and the various goals, the "addiction" level of the game tends to be quite high.

There are only a handful of games I continuously go back to and Angry Birds (in all its permutations) is one. The two other favourites are Iconfactory's Ramp Champ (developed very much prior to the release of the retina displays) and Tiny Wings by Andreas Illiger.

Both of these games are essentially designer-driven and as such are drop-dead gorgeous. The design certainly caught my eye, but the game play on both are also quite well thought-out. Ramp Champ is essentially either Skee-Ball or a target gallery game, depending on the level you play. You roll the balls up the ramp, hit targets or holes and get points. The points earn you tickets, just like in physical Skee-Ball and you exchange them for virtual prizes. There's a set of shelves for you to display (and interact) with your goodies and there's also 3 goals for you to hit per level with trophies received (and displayed in your trophy shelves) as well. You have fast play and lots of incentives to keep coming back to the game. After all, you have to save up to get some of those nifty prizes!

At first blush, this game should have gone just as viral as Angry Birds, but it didn't. It was certainly attractive enough to catch the eyes and attentions of people. Game play was fast and it was a variation on a well-loved and established game.

I believe it didn't achieve the same popularity for an extremely frustrating reason. In Angry Birds, the graphics are reasonable and cute, but they're not drop-dead gorgeous. The backgrounds from major "chapter" to major "chapter" change, but the individual levels within a "chapter" don't change much. The game pieces don't really change much either, other than the occasional addition of a new bird or new complication. Development time for Angry Birds is primarily devoted to level design, not visual design.

Ramp Champ's development time focused both on level design and drop-dead gorgeous, intense-focus-on-the-little-details visual design as well. The result was far fewer levels. They added in-app purchase of additional levels and did seasonal levels before Rovio added Angry Birds Seasons to the mix, but it was one level per season whereas Rovio had one "chapter" per season with 15, 30 or more levels to it.

Ramp Champ has a loyal and devout following and when the retina display iPhones came out and especially when the iPad came out, players begged for an update to the game. Several of the Iconfactory designers said it would never happen. The graphics would have to be recreated at the different resolutions in order to maintain the standards they'd already set in the visual design of the levels. The ROI for the update, which many users would insist should be free, was just not worth the time. The same went for the additional ramp packs – it wasn't worth the time and effort to produce more levels if the purchases weren't forthcoming. Without continuing support for the ever-changing world of iOS and without adding more levels, the game essentially flat-lined.

Similarly, Tiny Wings also had fast game play with multiple goals per level and also had gorgeous graphics. It got quite a bit of buzz in the design community when it first came out, but I rarely hear about it now. The basic gameplay for this game is you have a bird with tiny wings - he can't fly far, but if you land him just right in the valleys, you essentially slingshot him high up in the sky and give him a speed and distance boost. You have various basic goals, gathering coins, getting to a further island before night overtakes you and more specific goals to each level.

I eventually lost interest in the game because despite the fact that the colour, textures and arrangement of the hills and valleys differed (along with the goals), the basic background was essentially the same. Combining that with the increasing difficulty of the levels and I eventually got bored. (Granted, I have a low threshold of boredom, but I can also be quite obsessive about completing all goals.) It became the same look and the same goals in my mind as the game progressed. There was not enough change to keep my interest. I'm sure that Andreas Illiger kept the backgrounds relatively similar in order to cut down on development needs, but that trade-off is a portion of what finally made the game boring to me. I understand that Tiny Wings was voted iPhone game of the year for 2011 and even landed a top spot in the App Store until Angry Birds Rio was released. Still, despite its success, the buzz around it has not reached the viral levels and penetrated popular culture in the way that Angry Birds has.

Angry Birds is not a brilliant game in and of itself. It is a brilliant understanding of why we play games. It fits a need for us to have something to do whilst we wait in line at the store, wait for a plane or unwind before bed. We don't have to make much of a time commitment to the game in order to succeed at it. It's constantly introducing new things - environments, characters, complications. Its random elements ensure the game is never exactly the same and its incredible wealth of levels ensures that even if you replay a level you've not only beaten, but three-starred, you'll most likely have forgotten just how you did it last time. It understands our need for constantly challenging ourselves, our propensity for boredom and our desire to compare our achievements to others.

It also understands the fine balance between design and business practicality.

It's not a choice I would prefer to make. As a designer, I want stunning graphics all the way through my game. But I have to admit that what truly keeps me coming back is both the challenge of "almost getting it" and new levels. If Angry Birds had stopped releasing new levels and challenges both, I'd have deleted it long ago.

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:25 PM Design | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | | Stumble

To celebrate our birthdays, @AMP2 and I went out to Coronado State Monument and then Jemez State Monument to look at the remains of some of the local pueblo areas.

Coronado State Monument is very interesting, but the pictures I would most love to have taken are not allowed. It's quite interesting to go through the museum and the ruins, but there's little left there and most of what is still visible is actually a restoration by the WPA built back in the '30s - and there's actually precious little of that left now. (Let me put it this way, I had to ask if one section was original Kuaua - it was not. Even though it was barely 6 inches above the ground and looked like melted adobe, it was actually the remains from the '30s!)

They have a kiva there, but with only one ranger on duty, he couldn't take us out there. We'll have to go back later to visit that on a day they're doing tours. (No photography is allowed inside any kiva ... perfectly understandable! I'm just glad we can even go inside.)

They also were able to save some of the murals from inside the original kiva and they have those mounted in a museum room - but no photography is allowed of that either. I'm going to have to go back with a sketchbook if that's allowed.

After visiting Coronado, we headed northwest to Jemez Pueblo and had a wonderful lunch at Dave's Burgers and More. It's a little roadside kitchen right on Highway 4 and the frybread was REALLY good. We drove through the reservation and deeper into the Jemez mountains and finally landed at Jemez State Monument. If I read the guidebook correctly, most of the ruins here are actually of the church complex, kind of sandwiched into the then-existing pueblo. Here's the church itself:

Then there's a couple of shots I couldn't quite resist taking ... windows....

And then there was the baptismal font area - this is actually in the wall on the outside of the church space. I guess it was a small chapel next to the church?

After we finished walking the trails and reading the guidebook for Jemez State Monument, we just continued driving north - just to see what was out there. It was really hard for me to concentrate on driving because I wanted to just take a million pictures of the mountains. They were just stunning - the colours in the rocks was just absolutely amazing.

And then we happened onto Soda Dam, a unique geologic feature - it almost looks like a cave somehow landed out in the open. It's made largely of calcium carbonate (kind of like hard water stains on plumbing if you have hard water). If you're curious about it, here's a bit more of an article. You can click on the second image below for a desktop wallpaper version of that picture.

And then @AMP2 saw someone on top of the Soda Dam feature and well ... we decided to head up there as well. The only problem is, after my bone marrow transplant for Hodgkin's back in 2001, I've had a very, very mild form of vertigo ever since. I can climb, but I can no longer get near the edge of a feature, particularly if it's very windy. I constantly feel like I'm tilting in the direction of falling off of whatever it is I've climbed. Most of the time it doesn't affect me very much, but it's really frustrating. I used to be able to climb all over just about anything and really wanted to go mountain climbing. Today, I'm lucky if I can just be a scrambler. I had a hard time taking pictures inside of the little cavelet, because I kept feeling like I was going to fall out of it. There was not that much of a slope to the outside ... it was just this stupid vertigo. So, while I did get up to the top of the Soda Dam feature, I couldn't really walk the very narrow path that would have let me walk out to the top of that waterfall and cavelet spot. Had I been able to get over there, the area was wide enough that I would have been all right, but ... well, *sigh* ... it just wasn't going to happen today. Maybe I'll try again a day when the winds aren't too high. But @AMP2 did manage to get up there!

And, as we turned around to head back to the car, I saw one of my favourite things ... graffiti!

On the way back home, I swung into Big Chief gas station ... a defunct little market and gas station across the highway from Zia Pueblo. It had the look of a 50s shop, something you'd expect to see along old Route 66 (we were on NM 550, I think, though).

I like the landscape someone's painted on the front. I'm not sure if the owners had done that (probably not) or if a graffiti wannabe started something and perhaps got caught. But if you look to the left of that shot, or the close-up here below, you can see they've helpfully labelled the landline. Is that where the telephone landline goes into the building? Or is it the horizon line for the line art that continues out to the right?

And then there was my favourite piece of graffiti in a long time on the side of the building. I love the commentary here, especially considering the horrendously 50s tacky "big chief" painted on the sign above the gas station. This is another image that you can click for a desktop wallpaper version.

It was a great day, but man are we beat now despite not having gotten to do much hiking. I think we spent longer driving than hiking today.

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:04 PM Vacations and Photos | | Stumble