Asymptomatic

Alex and I have been going back and forth in comments over the areas of our interest that overlap. In his recent post, he asks, "how long can organic communities self-moderate?"

I admit that I haven't read the Starfish and the Spider, although I did just one-click it into my Kindle, so it's doomed to suffer my analysis. Nevertheless, I had some comments about how leaderless organizations can thrive, particularly in open source communities, of which I happen to be a part of a couple.

Obviously, one of my passions is working with Habari and the people that have come together around that common goal. When we started, there were just four of us, each with various levels of ability and availability. I think you can pretty well call that "leaderless", since we all worked in tandem, and any small change any one person made was easily detected and reviewed by the other three. But as the project has grown, I think there is some kind of tragic irony in that the size of the operation inevitably leads toward a need for at least an informal management structure....

I'm a subscriber to Pyramid magazine, and some days I think the only reason I have to do so is because it's an inexpensive, consistent flow of game news. It's because of articles like the one I read today that I fail to fathom why I continue to pay them at all when less expensive tripe can be obtained more abundantly from many other sources.

The article in question is available only to subscribers (sorry), but involves a game that I discovered while meandering around the exhibit floor at Origins. The game is Rock! by Out of the Box Publishing, and is one of the more interesting new card games I saw while at the game fair.

Here is the summary of what the article said about the game, Rock!, besides ranting for several paragraphs about the quality of the materials from which the game was built:

Sadly, the artwork and the tin are the best features this item has to offer. … Alas, Rock! doesn't really rise above its "source material," and the underlying game is an inexpensive way to pay too much for what amounts to a gimmick.

Not only does that make no sense ("inexpensive way to pay too much"?), but it's outright wrong. Let me explain what Pyramid completely overlooked about this game. more

I saw this posted in a couple of places, and thought it would be fun to give my own responses.

How old were you when you first started programming?

I was 8 in 4th grade....

For our 10th wedding anniversary, Berta and I stayed over night in Philadelphia. The interesting story is less about what we actually did than what we tried to plan.

Mostly, you wouldn't call it a plan. Friday night, we dropped the kids off at Mom's then raced home to decide what to do. It was still early enough to consider flights out of Philadelphia, provided that they were late enough.

We'd been thinking about getting away for a while, specifically to exercise our passports one more time before they expire. Berta has stamps from Mexico, and I've got stamps from France, and we both have stamps and visas for India. I thought it would be nice to be "world travelers" and add another stamp to the book before it was retired.

It's kind of strange explaining these trips we take. It's like we just need to get away for a while, and it's not about being pampered or being extravagant (although the travel might seem that way), but more about just getting away from home. And so on Friday night we simply looked for a reasonably cheap flight to anywhere that wouldn't keep us away longer than the weekend. This is harder than you might think. more

Over the past weekend, we took the usual summer pilgrimage to Johnstown. This time, Berta's sister Therese was in the process of moving, so while they packed up some of their things, I watched the kids. This turned out not too unpleasant. During the time going out and while the kids were entertaining themselves amicably, I was able to do some more reading.

When last Pat as in town, he loaded up my Kindle with a few sample books. I started reading one by Vernor Vinge called "A Fire Upon the Deep". It was both interesting and strange. We also started listening to an audiobook prequel to the Tales of the Otori trilogy, "Heaven's Net is Wide", by Lian Hearn.

A Fire Upon the Deep is, as I said, strange. It's been a while since I've read true space sci-fi, and this certainly qualifies. It will be difficult to explain some of the many layered characteristics of this book, which set to establish axioms by which Vinge's world operates....