Time to Find a Job

Whelp, it's been nine months since I left my job and moved back to my favorite state. I've used up most of my savings, and it's time I got back into the working world. I'm going to write a new resume, set up a website, and start filling out applications.

It's been fun while it lasted, but I can't go on forever without an income. It'd be a lie to say my time away from work turned out the way I'd hoped. I didn't accomplish as much as I had wanted to, and I spent too much time worrying and feeling guilty for one reason or another. However, I don't regret the experience. Perhaps the timing of it, but not the experience itself. I learned a lot and got to enjoy life for a while.

I intend to keep working on my various projects, even after I get a job. I also intend to keep up this blog. It's become almost like a journal for me. Obviously, I'll have less time to devote to these things, so I might have reduce the updates to once every two weeks.

It's still too early to do a post-mortem on the experience, but that might be something I do at some point. Until then, I'm going to focus on the job hunt and enjoy the remaining free time I have left!

My Experience as a Man

I've been putting this off for far too long. This particular train of thought was sparked by a friend's personal response to #YesAllWomen and by this blog post.

First of all, I think the #YesAllWomen campaign is a good thing. I think that hearing these stories from people they know is hitting home with a lot of people, men in particular. I know it did so for me. That said, I'm not going to say much more about it. I'm a man, so I'm only equipped to give a man's perspective, and it's men that I'm going to be talking about primarily in this post. Please bear with me if I begin to sound like I'm dipping into asshole playing devil's advocate territory. That is honestly not my intention.

I think we need to focus more on men. That's not to say we should stop focusing on women, and it's not to say that the problems men face compare to the problems women face. However, it is my opinion that in focusing on women we tend to treat the symptoms of sexism more often than the causes. This is a good thing. We should be treating the symptoms. But unless we treat the causes, those symptoms will keep showing up.

It's my opinion that a lot of those causes can be found in men's culture. And contrary to what I've heard a lot of feminists say, I think it has less to do with how men see women and more to do with how men see themselves. Men spend their entire lives trying to prove themselves to the world, and more importantly, to themselves. Part of that includes proving themselves sexually, and despite the fact that this leads to absolutely horrible consequences for women, it's really not about them. For the men preying on women, and even for the men who aren't, it's about building up and cementing an identity.

I remember when I lost my virginity. It was good, and I was happy to be moving forward in my relationship with my girlfriend at the time. I was also hugely relieved. Relieved because I had felt so... inadequate for having not so much as kissed a girl until I was in my early twenties. Paradoxically, I felt also guilty for feeling that relief. I was afraid that perhaps part of me had only sought out the relationship so I could say I was no longer a virgin.

Men don't say this often, but many of us are deeply afraid of being like that. I think that fear has a lot to do with so called 'nice guys'. Fear sometimes has a funny way of turning you into exactly what you're afraid of becoming.

If I could, I would tell my younger self, and other young men, the following: It's okay if you want sex. You're allowed to want it. Wanting it doesn't mean you don't care about the other person. If you get turned down, you're allowed to feel disappointed. But it's not the end of the world. Don't take it out on the other person. They didn't do anything wrong, and it's not okay to treat them badly for your own hurt feelings.

I also remember when I came out as bisexual. I'm sure some people still suspect that I'm secretly just gay. I myself still worry that I might be holding on to the label as a way of preserving my male identity. In any case, the experience was awkward, but hugely relieving. For comparison's sake, the relief from losing my virginity didn't even come close.

I no longer had to pretend I wasn't interested in half the people I'd ever been interested in. It was also relieving in another way that I hadn't expected. Men are trained from birth to avoid behavior that could even be construed as feminine. Like most men, that fear was always in the back of my mind, even when I was alone. After I came out, that fear started to go away.

I suppose I figured that even if I slipped up on being manly from time to time, I'd still fall short of the usual stereotypes. Even so, my behavior didn't really change; I didn't suddenly turn into Jack from Will and Grace. I remember one time shortly after I came out, my mom, in an awkward attempt to be supportive, made some joke about being one of the girls. I think when she saw the confused look on my face she understood that I was still the same person, and I am happy to say that that one small thing was also the last.

When I started dating men, I noticed how differently I treated them. I was always more careful with women. I was worried about being too forward, about making them uncomfortable, or forcing myself on them. I didn't worry about that so much with men. In fact, I basically felt as though anything short of violent assault would be taken in stride. If they were uncomfortable, they would stop me, because they could.

I have since realized how warped both those views are, and have been trying to find a happy medium between them. It's not easy reversing years of psychological conditioning, and my view of men is still hurting my current relationship, but I feel that I am slowly making progress.

I didn't expect this post to turn into a confession of my own experiences, but it seems to have done that. But I'm still going to wrap up with what I originally intended. If we want things to get better for women, we have to think about the experiences of men. We need to stop telling boys how to be men, and start telling them how to be people. Because that voice in the back of our heads isn't just hurting us, it's hurting everyone.

Thoughts In Progress

Hey there internet. This week I decided to depart from the usual progress report and do an opinion piece. However, it's taking me longer than I expected to finish so I'm going to post it some time tomorrow. As far as actual coding progress goes, I departed from the terrain generation again. I'm starting to realize that it becomes a time vortex if I work on it for too long. Instead, I decided to work on the GUI code I started way back last year. Anyway, I'll have more to say tomorrow!

Edit: I'm still spinning my wheels on the post I wanted to write because I'm a horribly indecisive person who can't figure out what he wants to say. I think I'm just going to hold on to it until next Tuesday.

Chugging Along

Still working on the terrain model. I managed to root out a few sneaky and terrible bugs. Aside from that there's not much else to report; progress is slow, but steady.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

I went back to working on my other project this week. I've made some good progress. I changed my erosion model and things were looking up, but they weren't quite right. So naturally I continued working and mucked everything up. Things went

From this:

To this:

Okay I'm kidding. The second picture isn't actually fire and brimstone; it's just color coded. The red shows how much sediment is in the water and the green shows how fast the water's flowing. That said, things are still off. The sediment should dissipate smoothly through the ocean and slowly build up coastlines. Instead, it seems to gather in pockets, which leads to strange looking pits everywhere.

There three things, at minimum, that I definitely want working reliably before I use this data to generate actual in-game terrain.

First is natural valleys and coastlines. Otherwise the player will spend all their time on 45° inclines. This is something I've had a lot of trouble with. Some of my recent models have almost produced good coastlines, but not quite. This is because I'm now modeling sedimentation better. I think the results will be really good, if I can improve the current model. They aren't too smooth or too jagged and are really starting to look like actual mountains.

Second is stable rivers that are a least a meter deep. The blocks in-game are a meter wide on each side. My plan is for any surface water less than a meter to result in swampland. However, rivers aren't swampy so they need to be at least a meter deep to avoid this. River sources, on the other hand, tend to be either underground or swampy. Ideally, rivers will begin in swampy areas and transition smoothly to proper rivers.

Third is good mountains. It'd be boring if everything was grassland. There are a few things that go into this. They can't be too steep or too shallow. The amount of vegetation should be lower near the top. There should be some rocky outcrops. I'm really pleased with shapes of the mountains in the recent models. They aren't too smooth.

Those are the minimum that I want before using the algorithm in game, however, there are plenty of other things I want to include eventually.

Temperature and humidity. I would love to model these things. They would be super useful for creating natural biomes. However, I imagine they'd also be really finicky and hard to get right.

Snow and ice. While it would be really easy to simply make things freeze above a certain altitude, it'd be nicer to have a little natural variation. These things would also affect river formation, so it might take a lot of work.

Implied features. One thing I did with the new model was remove a lot of complexity. I decided that instead of trying to get everything to form naturally, I would dumb things down and use the results to generate extra features. For example, beaches should form wherever soil meets the ocean. Deserts would form in areas of low humidity. Waterfalls could be created anywhere rivers go over a steep drop.

That's it for today, folks!

Parser Finished

I finally finished the parser! It can now parse a text file and produce the appropriate syntax tree. The next step will be to produce actual machine code from that tree. I think, however, I will leave this task for the future. Right now, I'm itching to get back to my other project. Not much else to report, hopefully I'll have new screenshots next week.

Parse All the Things

Packrat Parsers are interesting things. They basically try every possibility everywhere. Surprisingly, this turns out to be fast because they only do it once. They get away with this because they record every single thing they do. In recent years, computers started having enough memory that this idea is no longer completely ridiculous.

Been continuing work on the parser I started. The first stage is more or less complete. That is to say, I can give the parser a file, ask it if that file is valid, and get a yes-or-no answer. However, it's going to need to do a little more than that before it's useful. Ultimately, I will need a syntax tree representing the file. There are still a few more grammar rules that I need to add, but I'm going to cross those bridges when I come to them.

I've also been playing Skyrim in my spare time and getting a lot of ideas for things I could add to my other project. I got an idea for how to better organize possible features so I don't get inundated with all the possibilities. If I get burnt out on the parser, you might actually see some progress being made on that project someday.