cat /proc/claus

Two days ago I went to this Nomikai (work-related drinking “parties”) with some industry contacts of my lab. While the nomikai itself was not very exciting (I don’t really like this kind of Japanese event, but that’s for another post), I had a nice little neat idea while chatting there.

One of the research topics addressed in my laboratory is the use of Evolutionary Computation to assist in music composition. Basically, a EC algorithm generates multiple small pieces of music, which are evaluated by the human composer, and those evaluation scores are sent back to the computer, which try to generate a new generation of pieces similar to those which received a high score. This particular framework of evolutionary computation is called “Interactive Evolutionary Computation” (IEC) [1], because the fitness function is a human operator, and not a algorithmic function.

A big issue IEC is “user burden”. Evolutionary computation is based on scoring multiple candidate solutions, many times - when this evaluation is done by a human, instead of a computer program, the user may get tired after scoring too many individuals. To avoid that, it is important to either use the least amount of evaluations as possible, or make the evaluation as quick and painless to the user as possible - a lot of research has been done in both areas.

Now, the idea - how about using the concept of crowd sourcing to IEC? Instead of having one user evaluating the songs, we would have multiple users evaluating them in a asynchronous manner. The example we thought up would be a website where, say, mobile ring tones are generated by EC, with downloads and user evaluation being used as scores. Every few days(?), these values would be used to generate new tones, which would replace the old ones. This could not only generate more interesting tones, but also be able to “track” or “follow” fashions or memes of users.

A quick google search on the above keywords seemed to reveal that this is still a new idea (nothing relevant shows up on the first page for “crowd-sourcing IEC” and “crowd-sourcing composition” only show non-EC approaches [2]). Try it while it is fresh. Brainstorming in the comments is welcome

Links
[1] IEC on Wikipedia
[2] Crowdsourcing Composition

“Say Yes” is a principle for running RPG games, which says that whenever the players come with some crazy and/or unexpected idea, the best course of action to the DM is to “Say Yes”, and run with it, integrating that idea into the game the best way possible. The opposite of “Saying Yes” would be to have ideas from players that are too hard, unlikely or stupid to succeed to fail with a whimper at their feet.

I must say that it is a fine idea that has helped me a lot in my recent games. The players want to disrobe the evil priestess, tie her to the end of a 10 foot pole and use her as a trap detector? Yes! They want to honestly join the creepy cult of strange gods being built by the shady NPC? Yes! They want to completely ignore two tribes fighting for “destiny” in a forgotten temple and head first to another ruin they had heard about hoping things will be easier there? Yes! They want to try and placate the raging alligator with a whip and a chair, circus style, instead of fighting to the death? Yes! They want to charge and attack into that NPC-GHOST? Yes! Yes! Yes! In my experience, all these “yes” brought their reward to the game.

But saying yes is not only good for the DMs. I believe that players, too, should take “Say Yes” into their minds when sitting at a table to play an RPG.

One recent example happened recently. Two friends of mine were visiting town, and I got together part of my regular group to play a one shot S&W dungeon to them. I have this one particular dungeon that I like to run every time I need a quick one-shot, adding a few new rooms/changing some rooms. One of the players, realizing it was the same dungeon I always run for one-shots, asked if he could use the same character he used “the last time” - that character was one of the few surviving members of a previous expedition. I thought that would be a great idea: The surviving character, after years dealing with the deaths of his friends, eventually decides to face his fears and finish his business with the dungeon, mounting a proper hired expedition this time. It tied beautifully all the other members of the group into the game.

Then, just as the game began, before anything happened, that player who was supposed to have called/hired everyone else, and to lead them to the dungeon decides that after all he is just too afraid of dying and don’t want to go into the dungeon any more. Cue meta-roleplaying of everyone trying to encourage him to change his mind. Ooops…

A few other similar cases. In a recent investigation game I was playing, one of the players was paralysed with fear that the group we were investigating already knew about our presence. The player would shot down every lead by other players and the GM with “they already know we’re here, they would be prepared for that”, effectively stalemating the game. In an old 3e game I ran, the group was a bunch of kids lost in a forest. One of the kids was a bookworm who had dropped her favorite book in the woods when the group had to run from a bunch of monsters, and the player decided that the girl would sit down and waste away because “that book was her life”.

That is the thing that gets me. A Role Playing game is a story about someone who enters in an adventure. But not only interesting things (the adventure) has to happen to the character, but the character must be also active in regards to the adventure itself. Of course, this does not mean that the players are supposed to follow every hint and lead that the DM throws before them just as they stand, but this does mean that refusing to act at all should not be an option. After all, we don’t have a movie about the teenager who thought the old geezer in the white lab coat was too geeky and refused his plea to help testing a time machine.

Of course a GM can try to adapt the story around players that insist in saying no. But just as in the case of saying yes or no as a GM, a gaming table moves much smoothier when both sides are saying yes and improvising around each other. The RPG is much more fun as a group dance than as a one man’s tap-dance performance in front of an audience.

Last week I ran the first part of the penultimate game of my 4E campaign.

Actually, the campaign was not supposed to end so soon, even though it did have a definite, planned end, but since two key players were leaving in 2 months, and myself am leaving Japan by October, I decided to pull the plug and wrap things up. It is something new to me, to actually bring an RPG campaign to a grand finalle! (both as a DM and as a player!)

As I have written last time, the group was exploring and abandoned island, in search for the riches left by a forgotten civilization, promised by a crazed NPC. They had managed to climb the highest mountain in the island and get a general view of their surroundings, which revealed to them the location of the old capital of the lost civilization (think Mayan Pyramids). They decided that whatever treasure this island might have, it would certainly be hidden in that island.

As they followed the river north towards the location of the old capital, the woods around they started to get creepier and creepier. Every so often, they had the impression of being observed. The weather was becoming darker. The group stopped as they heard voices coming from the woods - ghosts where about them!

This is where it gets interesting - one by one, the adventurers were taken by illusions. Each of them saw themselves as “king”, facing some sort of catastrophe. Some of the group members dove deep into the illusions, trying to solve the problems posed before them. Others tried to fight what they saw as “not truth”. Those that fought the illusion eventually became freed, and found themselves on a misty cemetery, with their companions heading slowly but surely towards a large stone structure, while shouting whatever they were saying in their dreams.

Afraid of the stone structure, the waking members of the group managed to stop and free the sleeping ones before they entered there. They decided then to investigate the stone structure, which seemed to be the centre of the strange powers which were about them. Inside, they found a large and very pompous tomb, surrounded by statues and minor tombs. On top of the big tomb was a ghost in the trappings of a king, tied by some sort of ethereal ropes.

The group promptly charged to attack that ghost! (Shoot first! Ask questions later!)

A big battle followed, in which ghostly defenders of the king attacked the party, as they tried to destroy the big ghost in the center of the cemetery. As they hacked into the king’s hitpoints, more and more ghosts assistants would appear, and the king would scream both for help and for freedom. Finally, the group managed to destroy the King’s material form, which sent its servants into sturpor.

At that moment, the ropes that tied the ghost king started forming his body again, and even more ghosts started to appear. While the group decided to stay and fight, Sincearu, the bard, chose to perform a ritual to sanctify the king to the Elder Gods. This ritual made the king stronger, and he started to fight against the magical ropes that bound him. The rest of the group helped Sincearu with his ritual, and soon the ghost King was freed from the magical bounds that kept him controlled.

He revealed to the group that he was the last kind of the ludians, the lost civilization of the island. That he was controlled by some sort of creature from the “World of Nothingness” that they had summoned accidentaly while trying to find a escape route from a catastrophe that was hitting the island. He pleaded with the heroes to help him defeat the creature that held sway over him and the remaining souls from Ludus, and in exchange he would reveal to them the secrets of the island.

==

The game itself worked pretty flawlessly. In the last session, one of the players complained about “senseless fights” where the group was basically walking around the island killing whatever moved in front of them, so I decided I would give them some “good guys” and “bad guys” to ponder about. I did not count, however, with them attacking the King’s ghost so viciously even though I dropped a bunch of hints that he was supposed to be talked to, not fought with.

In the “illusion” encounter, I wanted to try a way to resolve conflicts in the game that did not involve fighting or dice rolls. In the encounter, each player was faced with a facet of the last moments of the life of the king - yeah, they were being “possessed” by ghosts at the time. Each “round” in the illusion was defined by a scene playing out, and the player’s reaction to that scene. For each round, the character would sleepwalk closer to the tomb, and after 6 rounds it would be laying prone at the feet of the ghost king, ready to be sacrificed.

The solution for the illusion scene was to act twice in a row in a way that disbelieved the illusion (the first time would show some cracks in the illusion), although I accepted some alternative solutions, such the bard which decided to invoke his god during the illusion. The one thing that I (unwittingly) did right in this scene was to have the players describe his action, before describing the results of that action moving to the next player’s scene first - two of the players said that this resulted in a nice “suspense” effect. This was probably the highlight of the game.

In the ghost encounter, I wanted to go for a battle encounter where the goal was not to “kill all enemies”, but rather to finish a ritual which would free the king ghost. Ideally one or two characters could concentrate on the ritual near the ghost while the rest had to protect them from the hordes of guardians. However, I did not counted on my players being so bloodthirsty - I guess I did not train them that well. What actually happened is that they managed to beat the ghost king to a pulp WHILE kicking the guardians at the same time. I then decided that i would have hundreds of the ghosts show up at the same time to force the party to flee, but just at that time one of the players figured the solution to the puzzle So I guess no big loss.

Now to prep for part two of the game - infiltrating the Capital!

So, finally, I’m done with my “Test” Thesis Defence. For those not used to the Japanese system of graduate studies, six months before you graduate, you need to perform a “mock examination”, where you do your thesis Defence in the same conditions as your final Defence, including to the same commitee. This committee will judge whether your work should be “ready” by the end of the following six months, and tell you what they think you need to do to complete your thesis.

Unlike many of the “rituals” of Japanese academia, this is one that I don’t find to be completely useless. The professors don’t read your thesis anyway, but at least they have the chance to make some serious questions to your work, and you have the chance to address those questions, which makes a kind of “building together” feeling which pleases me.

So most of my late December and all of January was spent preparing for it, a time where almost all of my other activities where stopped or cancelled. But it was actually worth it. I managed to get rid of 90% of the “drudge” of my thesis, and stablish all that had already been done. The presentation itself was much lighter than I expected, the professors liked my thesis and my results, which gave me a boost in confidence. Instead of making any big criticisms of my thesis, they all just suggested extensions to lines of research that I had already drawn out in the first place.

Now, after a month and a half in this backbreaking pace, I go back to “almost” my normal routine. I got two papers I have to finish by the end of march, so the idea is to do experiments now in Feb, and writing the results next month. Also, and perhaps most importantly, I’m now on “job hunting” season, which means getting my shit together to find out and apply to a few nice places to a post-doc/professor/researcher position. Of course, I also have to finish the changes to my thesis, but I got at least 4 months after these papers, so that is on hold. On the personal side, I want to return to regular geocaching, reading books, bi-weekly RPG games, and python programming. And writing a dozen of late blog articles I wanted to write about.

Heh, maybe I don’t have so much free time as I thought I would, but this is looking like a very interesting last year in Japan, if I can keep myself from procastinating too heavily

Between Dec. 18th and 20th I visited Okinawa for the second time, to attend the 3rd Japanese Symposium on Evolutionary Computation. Since it was a school-paid trip, I was not allowed any extra days to have some fun in Okinawa, but I managed to squeeze some time before and after the conference.

The report is broken in two posts - this first one will focus on the fun stuff I did in Okinawa, the second one will focus on “school stuff”.

Okinawa is an island far to the south of the Japanese archipelago. It is considered to be a beach resort by many people. I have actually been here for tourism only in 2006, when I came with the rest of my lab. This time, I decided to try and do some exploring by myself - I downloaded about 20 different geocaching locations around Naha (the main city) to find while I was there.

In the first night, I went out around 22:30, after having dinner with a Sempai (see the other post), with the goal to find about 7 caches within 1km of my hotel. Unfortunately, the force was not with me that night. I could not find the first two caches, and when I went to search for the third one, I somehow managed to lose the papers where I had all cache information written down - I was quite dejected.

In the second day, though, lady luck smiled at me. First thing, I found out that the hotel I was staying in let us use their bicycles for free! That was a big relief, because the bike rental prices in Okinawa were quite above the rest of the country. Now on wheels, I could check more caches before having to head for the conference.

That morning I found two very interesting locations. The first was the Fukushu-en. It is an incredible Chinese garden, with a large waterfall, two ponds, and many environments. You could walk there for hours looking at each small detail. The cache (which I didn’t find), was located somewhere inside a series of artificial caves under the waterfall. Finding these kind of places is 90% of the fun of Geocaching for me The second interesting place I got to that morning was a cache on the top of a hill - the thing is, I had no map to get to the cache, just the GPS coordinates, so I had to try many small streets to find out the correct location, backtracking all the time. While doing that, I ran across an unkempt cemetery, an old church, and an abandoned shack! A true adventure in getting lost :-P.

But not as lost as I got at night. That night I decided to use my extra time to check some caches further away, near the famous Shuri Castle. One problem (or is it a feature?) of geocaching, though, is that by following the coordinates to your location, you take the most straight way to it, which is not necessarily the easiest way. In my case, I ended up crossing this giant hill in the middle of the island, which was also a huge cemetery, in the middle of the night, under light rain. Can you say spooky? At least the way down was this old, old, steep slope which was quite charming (even though It was so steep I couldn’t just ride my bike down). I ended up finding only two of the 4 caches I searched for that night, but the adventure was well worth it. When I got back to my hotel room, I fell asleep almost immediately.

Although not as successful as I hoped, caching in Okinawa was rather fun. It is interesting to note the differences between the caching styles of different areas. I was a bit disappointed by the number of “shop-caches” in Okinawa - caches that were located not in interesting places, but in front of shops. One of the caches was actually located INSIDE a bar, just under the cashier. Can you say monetization? Also, even in the caches you can feel the looming presence of the American Military in Okinawa - many cache containers were army supplies, and the geocoins featured lots of silly jingoist messages (”support our troops”, blablabla). I longed for the more family/geek friendly caches in Tokyo. It is funny how you can feel welcomed/un-welcomed through an inanimate object hidden behind a rock.

Of course, the trip was not all fun an games. In the next post I’ll report on the “research” side of the trip.