What is the newest installment of 'Random Thoughts' on Physics Forums?

[zoobyshoe]

Artificially intelligent fish. ('Not sure what that all says about my own though.) The cats love it though! So there's that.

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/today-i-accomplished.877902/

I don't for a second believe those are real cat's paws. It's a game for artificial cats.

 

[collinsmark]

I don't for a second believe those are real cat's paws. It's a game for artificial cats.

The ironic thing is that at one time I was up to four cats. And I had several close friends who had cats too. But over the years my cats passed, as did my friends' cats. When I made the app I figured I could easily find a cat for filming a promotional video, but it turned out to be a bigger challenge than I anticipated. After several months I resorted to what you see in the video.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The ironic thing is that at one time I was up to four cats. And I had several close friends who had cats too. But over the years my cats passed, as did my friends' cats. When I made the app I figured I could easily find a cat for filming a promotional video, but it turned out to be a bigger challenge than I anticipated. After several months I resorted to what you see in the video.

Someone should have told you: new cats come off the assembly line everyday. They haven't been discontinued yet.

 

[Sophia]

Artificially intelligent fish. ('Not sure what that all says about my own intelligence. ) The cats love it though! So there's that.

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/today-i-accomplished.877902/

How do you teach cats not to scratch your display?

 

[collinsmark]

How do you teach cats not to scratch your display?

Displays these days are pretty much impervious to cats. Gorilla Glass is harder than cat claws.

 

[Sophia]

Displays these days are pretty much impervious to cats. Gorilla Glass is harder than cat claws.

Great, I see you have thought about everything! :D
I may try your app on my cat just for fun :)

 

[ProfuselyQuarky]

Artificially intelligent fish. ('Not sure what that all says about my own intelligence. ) The cats love it though! So there's that.

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/today-i-accomplished.877902/

Who says that that's only entertaining for cats?! Reminds me of abowman's awesome fish widget

 

[Psinter]

In my newfound free time, I made a fish game for cats! Yeah!

That's awesome!

@collinsmark - Now that you have tried a game engine, I feel like I can finally talk to someone about something that has been bothering me for quite a while. I have one critic of most game engines, perhaps you that have used one, can relate to the situation some developers of games have had to confront.

Spoiler

I have always had one negative critic of that game engine (and most others in existence as well). For this one specifically, it is something they have been carrying over so many years. And that is that they are using an almost 9 year old framework which doesn't support parallelization (.NET 3.5). And established solutions cannot be used with the game engine.

But they are not the only ones. No game engine really supports parallelization. Not even UE, unless you use C++ AMP (C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism). Naughty Dog developers (with their own game engine) had to implement their own parallelization for the famous game The Last of Us Remastered in order to make the game run at 60 fps in the PlayStation 4. In this video they show how they realized the painful truth that they had a lot of processing power without usage, but had to implement their own way to tap into that power. With little time before the release date of the game.

It sucks because the microprocessor companies don't increase clock speed and focus on increasing cores. And they market it like the more cores the better. But the developers of software still do everything sequentially and not in parallel. It has become such a hindrance that even if you were to have 100 cores of 2.0 GHz each, you wouldn't be able to run a game like, say, Minecraft without lag. Even with that huge amount of cores. Because games put most of the strain in a single core and go sequential.

You realize when you benchmark your computer while running a game and see that one single core is at 99% and the rest of the cores are chilling below 50% and sometimes even below 20%. That creates a lot of heat.

And in order for one to use parallelization with game engines, one has to maneuver a lot. Not an easy task, that could actually be incredibly easy.

And that's what grinds my gears about game engines and pretty much most software in general. That they go sequential when the industry markets and creates hardware for parallel.

Go with parallel hardware they said... It will be faster they said.

Out of that off-topic critic of almost all game engines in existence... I don't have a cat, but still, it looks like a cool app. Congrats! May you make more games in the future.

 

[collinsmark]

I even called around to find potential cat stars. Paraphrasing a little, one such conversation went something like this:

Ex-Girlfriend: Hello...
Me: Hi! It's collinsmark!
Ex-Girlfriend: Hi! Wow, it's been awhile!
Me: Yeah, it's been awhile. ... Yeah. ... Uh, by the way,
Ex-Girlfriend: Yeah?
Me: Do you still have cats?
Ex-Girfriend: <?! pause> Well, one of them is gone. Probably a coyote in the canyon.
Me: Oh, I'm so sorry. That's horrible.
Ex-Girlfriend: Yeah.
Me: Yeah, sorry to hear about that.
Ex-Girlfriend. Yeah, poor thing. We miss her.
Me: Yeah. ... So how's the other one?
Ex-Girlfriend: <?! pause> Okay, I guess? <?!>
Me: Do you mind if I come over and film your cat?
Ex-Girlfriend: Film my cat?
Me: Record your cat. On video.
Ex-Girlfriend: Huh?
Me: Yeah, I'd like to record your cat on video, playing with my tablet.
Ex-Girlfriend: <silence>
Me: And then post the video of your possibly-soon-to-be-famous, beautiful cat on the Internet.
Ex-Girlfriend: <click>

 

[fresh_42]

I even called around to find potential cat stars. Paraphrasing a little, one such conversation went something like this: ...
Ex-Girlfriend: <click>

You have been lucky that you got away with it. I expected a monolog beginning with grief and ending several dozens of minutes later with some new shoes or some stuff of comparable importance.

 

[Psinter]

I love to hike out in Nature. I also know my directions, and can usually tell time of day by the position of the sun. At night, I orient by stars, even in wooded areas. Scouting is a good way to learn such skills.

I remember this sad story.
http://www.freep.com/story/travel/2016/07/23/appalachian-trail-geraldine-largy/86992994/ I agree with Moor.

Wow, 26 days. I really mean no disrespect with this, but that is a lot of time. To last that long, it must have been a painful death .

Had it been me, I would have probably kicked the bucket in 3 days or in less than 1 week. I don't have much body fat. Which means that without food, I don't last long.

My place is small so I know that even if I get lost, I just have to walk in any direction and I will for sure find a house or a city in no time. Regardless of direction. Or a river. This place is swarming with rivers and water corpses. You walk a little and you find a river. Walk a little more and find another river. Still, poor woman.

I even called around to find potential cat stars. Paraphrasing a little, one such conversation went something like this:

Ex-Girlfriend: Hello...
Me: Hi! It's collinsmark!
Ex-Girlfriend: Hi! Wow, it's been awhile!
Me: Yeah, it's been awhile. ... Yeah. ... Uh, by the way,
Ex-Girlfriend: Yeah?
Me: Do you still have cats?
Ex-Girfriend: <?! pause> Well, one of them is gone. Probably a coyote in the canyon.
Me: Oh, I'm so sorry. That's horrible.
Ex-Girlfriend: Yeah.
Me: Yeah, sorry to hear about that.
Ex-Girlfriend. Yeah, poor thing. We miss her.
Me: Yeah. ... So how's the other one?
Ex-Girlfriend: <?! pause> Okay, I guess? <?!>
Me: Do you mind if I come over and film your cat?
Ex-Girlfriend: Film my cat?
Me: Record your cat. On video.
Ex-Girlfriend: Huh?
Me: Yeah, I'd like to record your cat on video, playing with my tablet.
Ex-Girlfriend: <silence>
Me: And then post the video of your possibly-soon-to-be-famous, beautiful cat on the Internet.
Ex-Girlfriend: <click>

 

[Borg]

Me: And then post the video of your possibly-soon-to-be-famous, beautiful cat on the Internet.
Ex-Girlfriend: <click>

Maybe she misunderstood you?

 

[DiracPool]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stratfor/2016/07/26/facing-north-koreas-nuclear-reality/#cc3720a28d51

"After announcing that it would cut communications with the United States, North Korea launched three missiles (two Scuds and a No Dong) last week."

Ok, I can handle the scuds, but please don't drop any Dongs on me, please. I submit. NO DONGS!

 

[Jonathan Scott]

In my newfound free time, I made a fish game for cats! Yeah!

And I downloaded it, even though I don't have cats. I find it nearly as hypnotic as watching a real aquarium.

 

[Sophia]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stratfor/2016/07/26/facing-north-koreas-nuclear-reality/#cc3720a28d51

"After announcing that it would cut communications with the United States, North Korea launched three missiles (two Scuds and a No Dong) last week."

Ok, I can handle the scuds, but please don't drop any Dongs on me, please. I submit. NO DONGS!

Had to google that term. Thanks for a new entry in my TIL list

 

[DiracPool]

Had to google that term. Thanks for a new entry in my TIL list

I'm glad I've enhanced your vocabulary, although I'm sure I could have found a better word to do it with. But I guess we take what we can get

 

[fresh_42]

I'm glad I've enhanced your vocabulary, although I'm sure I could have found a better word to do it with. But I guess we take what we can get

Lol, and the best part of it: it's nodong in South Korea and rodong in the north.(Wiki)

 

[Psinter]

Spoiler: House room

This is true, I can confirm. I was once in an about 3 million dollar house and there was this huge main room, almost the size of my parents house (a single room!), and it looked so empty. There were some paintings, a few sculptures, a place to sit and the rest looked like a huge empty space. The walls were huge and the ceiling looked very far. If I were to approximate I would say it was like 3 stories tall above my head.

I do not lie when I say it looked like in the picture.

 

[fresh_42]

This is true, I can confirm. I was once in an about 3 million dollar house and there was this huge main room, almost the size of my parents house (a single room!), and it looked so empty. There were some paintings, a few sculptures, a place to sit and the rest looked like a huge empty space. The walls were huge and the ceiling looked very far. If I were to approximate I would say it was like 3 stories tall above my head.

I do not lie when I say it looked like in the picture.

I know what you mean. We have that here, too. We call it church.

 

[Psinter]

I know what you mean. We have that here, too. We say church to it.

No, the churches at my place aren't that big. They don't have that much money... Well, the have, but it all goes to the leaders, not to build a nice building for the followers to go and pray and do whatever it is that followers do there.

The one I say was a house. Oddly enough it was one of the cheapest. At that access controlled place there were houses that made you literally flip. Flip like a fish out of the water with the awesomeness of the architectures. Those house architectures left you like:

And the streets of the place were in better condition than the streets under control of the government. The gardens of the houses were like super tidy. And I don't even know what we were talking about again.

Some architectures never cease to amaze me.

Ah yeah, I remember now. The house of the rich, that sometimes have these huge empty rooms.

 

[WWGD]

Sarah Silverman said something interesting tonight at the DNC. She said her shrink told her that "We don't get what we want, we get what we think we deserve."

I like that. I think it's true. These are the ugly truths of humanity that most of us want to close our eyes to but that biologically drive our motivations in life. It's the reason that people are stuck in deadbeat jobs and women (and men) continue to exist in relationships with abusive partners. I don't know if anyone remembers Tom Leykis, but he had a good line that I hold near and dear. He said that, in life, you deserve exactly what you get. I know it sounds overly harsh at first glance, but there is tremendous power in that sentiment. It means that you are in control of your destiny and blaming anyone or anything else is simply BS. I like that.

Why do then, e.g., you have babies who are molested ? Or airline flights that crash (together with the fact that the number has decreased with the advent of new technologies) : do all passengers simultaneously believed they deserve to die? Ditto for so many Jewish people with being killed+ serial torture?
; do

 

[Sophia]

Three weeks ago, I stayed here for a night http://www.zamekdobris.cz/en/

 

[Pepper Mint]

Three weeks ago, I stayed here for a night http://www.zamekdobris.cz/en/

The meeting halls look like small churches. Everything looks clean and beautiful. I don't know if many tourists visit the palace as it looks deserted though.

 

[Sophia]

The meeting halls look like small churches. Everything looks clean and beautiful. I don't know if many tourists visit the palace as it looks deserted though.

There's a guided tourist group each hour. They have to wear large slippers on their shoes so that floors are kept clean :-) and the furniture you see is in an area marked by ropes and tourists are not allowed to pass them.
This is a special chateau because it still has its original owners - landlords who live there several days a month.
In my area, all chateaus and castles were taken from aristocracy during socialism and most still remain in public/state ownership today.
4 years ago I spent a weekend in this monastery http://www.zeliv.eu/cs/menu/ubytovani-v-klastere/
One night, our group was sitting and talking in a dining room for a long time and at 3am I decided to go to sleep. It was so scary to walk alone in a monastery at such a time! :-D and of course, I couldn't find our room so it took me some time to get there.

 

[Psinter]

There's a guided tourist group each hour. They have to wear large slippers on their shoes so that floors are kept clean :-) and the furniture you see is in an area marked by ropes and tourists are not allowed to pass them.
This is a special chateau because it still has its original owners - landlords who live there several days a month.
In my area, all chateaus and castles were taken from aristocracy during socialism and most still remain in public/state ownership today.
4 years ago I spent a weekend in this monastery http://www.zeliv.eu/cs/menu/ubytovani-v-klastere/
One night, our group was sitting and talking in a dining room for a long time and at 3am I decided to go to sleep. It was so scary to walk alone in a monastery at such a time! :-D and of course, I couldn't find our room so it took me some time to get there.

Did they have like a huge empty room?

Just kidding.

I sort of like the inside. Part of it looks like a cathedral.

The word chateau rings me something, but I can't remember where I have heard it.

 

[DiracPool]

Why do then, e.g., you have babies who are molested ? Or airline flights that crash (together with the fact that the number has decreased with the advent of new technologies) : do all passengers simultaneously believed they deserve to die? Ditto for so many Jewish people with being killed+ serial torture?
; do

Well, nobody wants to be sitting in a movie theater either watching the 25th anniversary celebration of "Back to the future" and have some masked gunman come in with a machine rifle and mow everyone down. So these accidents and terrorist attacks are outlier incidents that I don't think Sarah Silverman or Tom Leykis were considering in their sentiments. It's about personal power when dealing with ordinary day to day issues, people, circumstances, and the general irritations that come along with it. If you assign blame to other people or other entities, you are taking the power to control your destiny away from your self. And if you do that, then you've relinquished your control over the situation. That's all I think that their sentiments were trying to advance, and I'm trying to embrace it because I do think it promotes personal power..it's so easy to blame other people and circumstance for you problems, but where does that ever get you?

 

[DiracPool]

Maybe she misunderstood you?

I haven't fact checked this, but I remember a story my dad told me when I was a kid that Arnold Palmer (the golfer)'s wife came on the Johnny Carson show and Johnny asked her if there was anything she did for her husband before his matches to give him good luck. She said, yes, I reach in his bag every morning before a match and kiss his balls. To this, Johnny responded, "I bet that makes his putter stand up straight."

I don't want to fact check it because I don't want to think that my dad gave me a BS story and because I think it's funny. The extended story is that Mrs. Arnold Palmer sued him for the slander. Haha. I don't know, my dad was a semi-professional golfer back in the day so it may have been BS. He also told me that my grandfather, a WW2 hero with a purple heart in the European (France) theater, lived in a tent. I believed this for years until we visited him in Long Island NY where he actually lived on a big estate. I thought, WTF did my dad BS me on that for? When we were driving out on long Island from the airport he kept telling me to look for tents on the side of the road as if I were helping to locate his dad. What a freak. This was in the early 70's and I think my dad was so stoned half the time he didn't know up from down.

 

[WWGD]

Well, nobody wants to be sitting in a movie theater either watching the 25th anniversary celebration of "Back to the future" and have some masked gunman come in with a machine rifle and mow everyone down. So these accidents and terrorist attacks are outlier incidents that I don't think Sarah Silverman or Tom Leykis were considering in their sentiments. It's about personal power when dealing with ordinary day to day issues, people, circumstances, and the general irritations that come along with it. If you assign blame to other people or other entities, you are taking the power to control your destiny away from your self. And if you do that, then you've relinquished your control over the situation. That's all I think that their sentiments were trying to advance, and I'm trying to embrace it because I do think it promotes personal power..it's so easy to blame other people and circumstance for you problems, but where does that ever get you?

Fair enough, I just did not understand that was the point; I thought you meant it in a more general sense.

 

[jim hardy]

I haven't fact checked this, but I remember a story my dad told me when I was a kid that Arnold Palmer (the golfer)'s wife came on the Johnny Carson show and Johnny asked her if there was anything she did for her husband before his matches to give him good luck. She said, yes, I reach in his bag every morning before a match and kiss his balls. To this, Johnny responded, "I bet that makes his putter stand up straight."

I seem to remember watching that episode , i believe it was indeed Johnny Carson but Mrs Bob Hope.
Carson's quip was "I'll bet that makes his putter rise."

 

[zoobyshoe]

I haven't fact checked this, but I remember a story my dad told me when I was a kid that Arnold Palmer (the golfer)'s wife came on the Johnny Carson show and Johnny asked her if there was anything she did for her husband before his matches to give him good luck. She said, yes, I reach in his bag every morning before a match and kiss his balls. To this, Johnny responded, "I bet that makes his putter stand up straight."

I don't want to fact check it because I don't want to think that my dad gave me a BS story and because I think it's funny. The extended story is that Mrs. Arnold Palmer sued him for the slander. Haha. I don't know, my dad was a semi-professional golfer back in the day so it may have been BS. He also told me that my grandfather, a WW2 hero with a purple heart in the European (France) theater, lived in a tent. I believed this for years until we visited him in Long Island NY where he actually lived on a big estate. I thought, WTF did my dad BS me on that for? When we were driving out on long Island from the airport he kept telling me to look for tents on the side of the road as if I were helping to locate his dad. What a freak. This was in the early 70's and I think my dad was so stoned half the time he didn't know up from down.

Apparently it's an old joke that was applied to any sport that involves balls back through history to the beginning of recorded time. Versions of it appear in some Egyptian Heiroglyphs, and clay cuneiform tablets found all over ancient Babylonia appear to ascribe this good luck ritual to the wife of then legendary bacci player, Tosserammi. However, I just made most of that up. Here's the snopes scoop:
http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/kissballs.asp