A real gamer’s bucket list

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I enjoy coffee table books. Those conversation starters that you leave sitting by your couch for guests to flip through and enjoy. One of my favorites is The Gamer’s Bucket List, which is essentially a top 50 list of games that every gamer should play. And while that makes for an enjoyable read (checking off the games you’ve played, finding gems that you haven’t, and arguing for the inclusion of games overlooked), I’ve always felt that a simple list of games is too narrow for a bucket list. To me, a real gamer’s bucket list is not about specific games or specific genres, but experiences that a gamer should have to make themselves well rounded. So, with that in mind, here’s my gamer’s bucket list!
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Speedrun a favorite game

Anybody who’s ever watched Awesome Games Done Quick knows that a good speedrun is a thing of beauty. Precision control, quick reactions, mind-bending sequence breaking…It’s a true test of a gamer’s skills and lateral thinking. Even if you don’t set a world record, getting good enough at a game to speedrun it takes the game from just being a favorite pastime to being a “talent” that you can show off and a point of pride.

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100% complete an expansive game

Some games don’t end when the credits roll. With a ton of hidden secrets and easter eggs hidden throughout, these games can take days (if not weeks) to fully explore. Most players will never see everything these games have to offer, but at least once it’s worth the effort to dig into every nook and cranny of a game to get that vaunted “100%” next to your save file.

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Complete a self-imposed challenge

If you’re looking for a challenge, sometimes just turning the difficulty up to “Insane” isn’t enough. A self-imposed challenge adds additional rules to a game to make it more difficult. Some challenges are simple, like the Nuzlocke challenge in Pokemon, which adds permanent death to an otherwise very forgiving game. Other challenges require a lot of ingenuity to complete, like the pacifist runs of World of Warcraft where you must find a way to reach max level without ever killing an enemy! No matter what the challenge, it will change your appreciation for a game and make you look at it in a whole new light.

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Get a high score on a leaderboard

Arcade game designers had the right idea when they added the leaderboard to their classic games like Pac Man and Space Invaders. While it’s fun to get a high score or an impressive time, there’s nothing quite like the validation of seeing your initials on the list of the best the game has ever seen. Online leaderboards listing thousands of players has made it much more difficult to reach the very top, and frequently reset arcade machines means that in-person scores don’t mean what they used to, but it’s worth finding that rare game with a score that seems in reach, and practicing like crazy to beat it!

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Play a game in early alpha

The games we play these days are absurdly polished. Even the so-called “betas” and “early access” titles are often near complete when the public first gets their hands on them. But playing a game that’s truly in the earliest stages of development will give a whole new appreciate for how far games have to go to get from prototype to release. It might be hard to actually find a game that has an early alpha you can access, but if you get the chance…take it! And be sure to help the developers make it the best game it can be.

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Play a game that came out before you were born

Games have advanced quickly in a very short amount of time. I still remember when 16-bit graphics were “realistic” as opposed to “retro.” But, unless you were born before 1972, you’ve only been around for part of that history. Getting your hands on a game that came out before your time will help you appreciate that even the games you consider “primitive” still have something to offer!

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Play all the games in a long-running series

My how Mario has grown. Since his initial Arcade release so long ago, he’s gone from 8 bit to 16 bit to 3D to outer space and most recently has been sent to the masochistic hellscape that is Mario Maker levels. Playing a game series through all of its iterations (maybe excluding spinoffs) is a great way to see not only how technology has evolved, but also how game design itself has changed over the years. You can see how early games were simple enough for a player to play without prior instruction, while new game need tutorials for even the most simple skills. You can see how modern games have advanced in storytelling far beyond what early games even attempted. No matter what game series you pick, you’ll learn a lot following it through its history.

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Play a modded game (romhack)

Some fans just aren’t happy with games the way they are, and are willing to dig in and mod them until they make something completely new. Some mods are good, some are bad, and some even go on to become full games themselves. Playing a modded game will give you an idea of just how creative fans can be when given a game as a starting point.

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Get involved in a gaming community

If there’s only one thing that gamers love as much as playing games, it’s talking about them. While it’s possible just to lurk on the forums or post one or two questions, it’s totally worth it to really get involved in a community. I’m personally pretty involved at Kazamatsuri, a community around Key Visual Arts, one of my favorite game companies. I’ve made some great friends just by sharing my thoughts there, and I think it’s worthwhile for any gamer to find likeminded souls by talking about the games they love.

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Host a LAN party

I feel like an incredibly old man saying this, but back in my day multiplayer was a hell of a lot harder. Where modern online matchmaking can match you up with an evenly skilled opponent in mere seconds nowadays, it used to take hours to work out all of the weird networking glitches to get a room full of people playing the same game. And while I certainly don’t miss the arcane rituals of network navigation, there was the nice side effect of gaming being a truly social event, with a group of friends all networked together in the same room. For that reason, I think a “LAN Party” is still a great experience for any gamer to have, though it might be worth using a modern game that’s a little smarter about the “online” part.

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Attend a gaming convention

Speaking of social gaming events, if getting a room full of people together to play games is fun, then getting a whole convention center full of them is amazing! Ever since my first trip to Blizzcon, I’ve made it a point to attend at least one gaming conference every year. Easily the most popular is Penny Arcade Expo, which happens three times a year in the US, and is always a blast. You get to see and play new games before they’re released, check out the super cool booths and snag some swag. My favorite part is attending panels and hearing from gaming icons, but with so much to do, there’s sure to be something for pretty much everyone.

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Attend a gaming concert

If there’s one thing I love more than games, it’s music. But if you put music and gaming together, well…now you’ve really got my attention. I had the good fortune to attend Video Games Live a few years ago, and let me just say that it was an amazing experience. Listening to the songs of my youth, performed by a live orchestra was truly awesome. I had shivers up and down my spine the entire time. Even if you don’t consider yourself a music aficionado, it’s still worth catching one of these shows if it’s in your area.

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Watch an eSports tournament live

With the popularity of League of Legends and twitch, it’s hard to remember when eSports in the US used to be a joke. We used to hear about the stadium filling Starcraft tournaments in Korea like they were a complete oddity, but little did we know that they were also in our future. A lot of gamers I know despised sports growing up, perhaps associating them with the jock-type people in school. But it turns out that watching skilled players competing at the highest levels really is a lot of fun, especially when you’re packed in tight with a bunch of other screaming fans. So pick a game you love, find a few players to cheer for, and join the crowd!

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Compete in a gaming tournament

You know what’s more awesome that watching a gaming tournament? Playing in one. Everyone has those dreams of being the very best at a game, but few have the drive to really achieve it. Still, if you can get to a competitive level in any game, then you owe it to yourself to sign up for a tournament (even a local one) to compete. There’s a real adrenaline rush when you play a game with something on the line, when you know that your chance at greatness depends on the next game. And you can take that one step further when there are spectators watching, responding to your awesome plays and unfortunate missteps. And who knows? Maybe that tournament could be the first step towards a true esports career!

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Design a level, and watch someone play it

Game design is hard, but as players we rarely see all the work that goes into making games. And while most of us don’t have the skills to build a game from scratch, putting together a level in a game like Super Mario Maker is well within our reach. But even more than just building a level, watching another person play through it will be absolutely mindblowing. Odds are that you’ll find that the parts you thought were easy turned out to be hard and the tricks you thought were clever are actually obvious. No matter what, you’ll end up with a lot of respect for how hard it is to make games, even without having to program or make art.

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Build a game prototype

Did I mention that game design is hard? While building a level might give you a taste of that truth, nothing will hammer it home like trying to make your own game from scratch. It used to be that you really needed to code to build a game prototype, but nowadays there are a lot of tools out there that promise code-free game design. Sadly, those tools are lying…making a full game still requires quite a bit of code and art…but putting together a simple prototype is certainly possible. You’ll quickly learn that simple things like the speed a character moves or how jumping works can completely change the way a game feels, and you’ll find yourself noticing the little details the next time you pick up a controller. You’ll never look at games the same way again!

Edit: Adding a few more ideas.

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Stream yourself playing a game

To say that streaming has taken off would be something of an understatement. I think I spend more time now watching people play games than playing them myself, and I enjoy every minute of it. But I’ve also streamed myself a few times on twitch, and that’s been awesome too. It’s a lot of fun to have an audience, people to share your successes and failures with. Not only will it make you focus harder, you might realize that it’s actually tougher than it looks to hold a fluid conversation while trying to play a game.

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Beat a really really hard game

Some games are relaxing and easy, but others are maddeningly difficult. And while these games might drive you to the edge of your sanity, there’s something intensely satisfying about that moment when you finally overcome the final obstacle and see the credits roll. I always used to call this “earning your gamer card,” since only the truly devoted are willing to put in the time and effort it takes to beat a game like Battletoads, Dark Souls, or I Wanna Be the Guy.

Language is Literally Alive

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People often describe languages using the verbiage assigned to living things. We call Latin a “dead language,” we say that certain linguistic developments are “healthy” or “natural,” and we describe languages on the verge of “extinction” as being “endangered.” To most people, this simply means life is a strong metaphor for language. To me, though, it’s something more. To me, language is (quite literally) a form of life.

Life is one of those words that everyone wants to define, but has a hard time being pinned down. Let’s look at the dictionary definition of the word:

life (noun)

  1. The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

It should be noted that this definition tells us a little about what life is, and a little about what it’s not. We get that life has certain processes: growth, reproduction, functional activity, continual change, and death. And we get that life is not inorganic matter.

But doesn’t that “not inorganic matter” thing seem a bit out of place? Artificially limiting? This sort of thing is a common discussion point in Artificial Intelligence circles. Much like “life,” “intelligence” has a definition that presents an ever moving goal post. The term “Strong AI,” for example, defines intelligence in direct relation to human intelligence. That is to say that artificial intelligence only becomes “true intelligence” when it is functionally identical to intelligence that we already acknowledge.

Personally, I reject that notion. It’s very possible that an artificial intelligence of equal power and utility to human intelligence could exist that bears no resemblance to anything we’ve seen before. Intelligence may be a broad concept, but as humans our experience is limited to only the intelligence of other humans and animals. The nascent intelligence of computers seems an odd and alien thing to us, and as such we refuse to acknowledge it for what it is. To justify this, we build definitions that (by design) exclude that which we are uncertain about. This is like if birds decided that planes couldn’t really fly because they don’t flap their wings.

As such, I submit another definition, drawn from the relationship between Entropy and Life:

life (noun)

  1. A self-sustaining localized reduction of entropy, characterized by its capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

This definition is one I’ve borrowed from researchers on artificial life, and it relies heavily on the concept of “entropy.” Loosely defined, entropy is the “chaos” of a system. A system with high entropy is one with many possible states, while a system with low entropy is bound to a smaller number of well-defined states.

If we look at things we normally think of as life, we can see how this definition applies. Living things tend to have highly ordered states (i.e. low entropy). The molecules are arranged in specific structures like cells, and they have internal processes that sustain those states. A living animal is not going to spontaneously transform into a dissociated conglomeration of water and organic molecules…at least, not until it dies.

So, now that we’ve gone through the work of defining what life is, how does this apply to language? Language is not rearranging molecules into orderly states, like we might expect from organic life. But there’s more than just chemical entropy out there. In fact, pretty much any set of things with multiple states can express some form of entropy. Information itself is such a system.

Consider the human brain as being awash with disordered information. We have neurons firing from our eyes, ears, mouth, and every nerve fiber in our body. Within that flood of signals, there exists some underlying associations. There are objects that we can see, colors that we can experience, sounds that we can hear, and more. Organizing all of this information is language. Through language, we classify that a Ford Mustang is a car, a Harley Davidson is a motorcycle, and that both of these are motor vehicles. Language, with all of its words and syntax, reduces the entropy of a set of information by defining concepts and forming connections between them. Moreover, all of those functional definitions of life still apply. Languages grow, reproduce, perform functional activities, and are constantly changing (much to the chagrin of language prescriptivists everywhere).

Languages are powerful beings, and humans have a natural symbiosis with them. Humans can better manage the information they are exposed to, because they have language to help organize it. And languages use humans not only as the source of new information (which they need to grow), but also as a vector for reproduction. When children are born, we immediately try to teach them our language, and when we meet others who speak differently, we try to reach common ground and learn each other’s languages. Note: In this instance, I’m referring to each individual’s interpretation of a language as a separate (but related) “language.” That is, my version of English is different from your English. They are members of the same “species,” but separate. Kind of like how I could have a beagle, and you could have a beagle, but that doesn’t mean we have the same dog.

Moreover, languages crop up wherever there’s information that needs organizing, and they are specialized to their information environments much like how animals are adapted to their physical environments. For example, computer languages are languages (as they organize information within a computer), but where humans and human languages are naturally fuzzy and implicit, the lowest level computer languages (like assembly) are rigid and explicit. This is a direct result of the structure that computers have, and thus the environment that those languages must be adapted to. Higher level languages, like C++ or Java, have to allow humans and computers to communicate, and thus they strike a balance between the super explicit assembly, and the wildly interpretive human language (like English).

There’s a whole lot that we can learn from treating language as a form of life. One of the most important, in my mind, is that it can aid us in our search for life throughout the universe. In our search for “life as we know it,” we may be blind to life as we don’t. If we can live in the constant presence of a life form that we use every day, and not even recognize it, how can we be expected to find new forms of life that test our boundaries? Recognizing that language is alive, gives a concrete example with which to test our new and broader definition of the term. It can spark our imaginations to look for other systems that can be organized, other instances where a self-sustaining region of low entropy can grow and multiply. And maybe in the process, we can discover other new forms of life that don’t exist in space beyond us, but right here with us.

So what do you think? Is language alive, or is this just a metaphor taken a step too far? What can we learn from examining language as a living thing?

MMORTS idea

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This is just a stream of consciousness idea for an MMORTS, inspired by a twitter conversation started by my buddy, Crow.

The problem with MMORTS

MMORTS’s suffer from a major problem: it’s hard to line up the design of a classic base-building style of RTS with the mechanics of an MMO like World of Warcraft. But the act of base building in an RTS naturally makes people think “What if I could just keep going with this? What if I didn’t have to stop building this base, and it could be persistent? What if I could eventually grow my base to take over a vast world?! Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

Of course, that idea is sadly broken, and following that design path is almost certain to lead you to games with runaway leader problems and gameplay that ultimately doesn’t match with the experience desired.

Breaking down the MMO/RTS

Another path to take, however, is a more piecemeal approach where you break each genre into its most identifiable tropes, and try to find ways to line those tropes up with eachother to create something that feels more natural.

For RTS games, the essential tropes seem to be base building, resource gathering, and squad based troop combat. And while there have been modestly successful “MMORTS” games that focus solely on the squad combat portion, and EVE arguably manifests the resource gathering game in whole, base building has been somewhat elusive in an MMO context.

For an MMO, the essential tropes seem to be drawn out progression over many hours of gameplay, world persistence, a large world to explore, and frequent interactions with other players either to cooperate or compete.

Base Building as Character Progression

Two of the features here seem to be at odds with eachother. Namely RTS base building and MMO world persistence. The natural problem that arises in the naive approach to MMORTS design is that as a player grows in power and increases the size of their base, they dominate a growing section of the game world.

The way around this is to alter the focus of base building away from building larger and larger bases towards building a single base in a confined space. Think of playing Sim City on an island. Because you only have so much space, you invest a lot of time and energy into making sure all of your buildings are laid just so. The key here is to be intelligently restrictive. To use a Starcraft analogy, you have room for a starport or an armory, but not both, so choose wisely. The key restriction on your base ends up being physical space, as opposed to some sort of limit on artificial “points.” The effect is similar, but it allows players to exercise their spatial reasoning skills.

In a very real sense, the base in this model is the RTS stand in for the character in most MMO’s. Just like how you customize and progress your character through class choice, leveling, talents, and gear, you customize your base through the buildings you have available, which buildings you choose to place, and the overall layout. You can further restrict base building to an out-of combat activity, allowing players to make the weighty decisions about their “character” in a low-pressure environment.

Multiple Resources

Looking onward to other trope combinations, RTS resource gathering can be related to MMO progression, but it’s also an intrinsic part of the real-time gameplay. This creates a divide that can potentially be solved by splitting resources into two categories: permanent resources and temporary resources.

Permanent resources are what you use to get new buildings, new upgrades, new unit-types, etc. These permanent resources are the rewards for quests and missions, and are essentially a stand-in for experience points. Permanent resources go towards your base, and thus their purpose is to upgrade your character.

Temporary resources are what you use in combat to activate abilities and build units. These are more like traditional RTS resources, where the focus of the game is on intelligently spending and gathering resources to amass an army. Unlike permanent resources, which stay in your inventory, temporary resources cannot be carried from one encounter to the next, and the units and upgrades built with those resources disappear at the end of the mission or instance. This encourages players to play quickly and constantly use their resources, in much the same way that they might in Starcraft.

Much like in Starcraft, the location of the temporary resources dictates where your base will be placed. Unlike in Starcraft, the design of your base can’t be dictated on the fly. Instead, the player has a command character (A general) who finds a group of temporary resources, and “warps” their base into existence. At the beginning, the base is “Inactive.” That is, not all of the buildings can produce units, give their upgrades, or attack. By gathering temporary resources, you can activate a building and pump out units.

At higher levels, you can also have “expansions” and “forward base positions.” Expansions are like mini-base locations. Similar to your main base, they are designed ahead of time, but unlike your main base they don’t have room for a full compliment of buildings. Where you can sim-city your main base to have a few unit-producting structures and a few defensive structures, the expansion usually only has room for one or the other, along with the necessary resource gathering building. The choice gives the player the option of either being more aggressive or more passive. For the forward base, the main base needs to be recalled by the general before moving. Forward bases offer some benefits. They often have more resources and they’re closer to an enemy base, allowing for more aggression. But to get to the forward base you need to sacrifice time that could be spent towards building units and gathering resources. In general, the choice to move to a forward base is not one to be made lightly, and usually won’t be made until resources at the main base are depleted.

Open World and Questing

The MMO tropes of world exploration and questing end up corresponding to the RTS idea of missions. In a modern single-player RTS, you are rarely tasked with simply destroying the opponent’s base. Instead, you have waves of enemies, wandering groups of foes, or other objectives that must be completed. In this MMORTS, your leader-character will be given quests and will need to wander the over-world to find where those quests are. Each set of quests will correspond with a specific location where enemies spawn. At that location is at least one set of temporary resources where the player can set their base. The number of base locations sets a hard limit on the number of players who can quest in a location at a given time, meaning that these areas are quietly instanced (phasing) to only allow that many players in.

Because the missions are rarely “destroy the enemy base,” you aren’t really competing with the other players over too much, and having multiple people there doesn’t give you a big advantage (nor should it hinder you! Players should never resent the presence of friendly players). Moreover, these base locations will only have a small number of temporary resources, meaning that you can only field a small number of units. Essentially, when you roll into the mission, you build a squad, then you fight AI mobs until you’ve completed your missions, then you pick up and leave. This fits with the Extra Credits idea of only having a limited number of points to build a squad with, but it feels less artificial. You may have X resources for this group of quests, but Y resources for a different set, leading to different unit choices.

Multiplayer

That brings us to the last major MMO trope, player interactions. As stated earlier, you will occasionally run into other players during missions, which will give you the opportunity to work with them. But in a more real sense, interactions with other players will be focused on instanced content. The MMORTS equivalent of dungeons and battlegrounds.

The key to good multiplayer interactions is asymmetry. The MMO formula of Tank/Healer/DPS is a good one, because it’s difficult to compare the importance of each role. You really can’t get by without all of them, and no player can fulfill every role at once. In a similar way, the limited size of a player base forces the player to make choices on what units to build. If, for example, I opt for flying units, I might not be able to create siege units. The key is to have a variety of enemies that are weak to different types of units, so that building an effective team centers on variety.

The MMORTS dungeon would consist of a series of set encounters. The encounters would start with the players taking a primary base, and they would quickly have to start building units and activating their buildings. As the battle progressed, the players would need to advance to expansions to gather more resources, and fight off enemy attacks while advancing forward to secure those new expansion locations. The boss battle, as it were, is to destroy the primary enemy base, which may have specialized units or other unique mechanics to make this different than a normal battle. After beating the boss, the temporary resources that their base was built on would become available as a new forward base, prompting the cycle to start again for the next boss.

The main balancing agent here, in terms of difficulty, is the number of resources on the map. Fewer resources means a smaller army. Thus, to have a sense of escalation, instanced dungeons will generally give players more temporary resources than solo quests, and the final bosses in these instances will give more temporary resources than the other bosses. In this way, the battles feel more epic, because bigger and more advanced armies are being brought to bear. Moreover, because you need to invest temporary resources to activate buildings, it’s very possible that the “end of the tech tree” for any given player’s base is only really accessed on those high level fights.

PvP is, in some ways, the easiest to envision for the MMORTS in this format. You come in with your pre-built base, along with a few other players. You gather resources, take expansions, and try to balance offense and defense against your opponents. Popular RTS mods could be used as inspiration for more battleground variety.

The importance of recognition

Regardless of the specific flavor of MMO I think players are looking for “recognition.” Players play MMO’s to be recognized by other players for their skills, achievements, and style. They play to express themselves in a way that others take notice of. To this end, three features become very important: customization of the hero unit, cities, and trade.

Customization of heroes allows for a visual sign of a player’s progression outside of battle. Cities give players a place where this progression can be flaunted (and where they can gauge the progression of fellow players). And trade gives an important reason to go to cities.

Closing thoughts

Ultimately, MMO’s make for an interesting but difficult design space. It’s often hard to put one’s finger on what the Massive portion of Massively Multiplayer brings to the table. Given the clamor for an MMORTS over the years, however, I think there is something to that combination. Personally, I think it’s the fact that progression loves an audience. Because RTS games generally feature a natural progression over time from weak units to strong and small bases to large, there’s a desire to show this off and say “Look what I made!” MMO’s give you that outlet, but in the process of designing for an MMO, you must (ironically) restrict that progression to something more manageable. This is the contradiction that has held back MMORTS’s from rising to prominence, and it’s one that should be kept in mind by any serious designer approaching this genre.

Please continue the conversation in the comments section. What would you want to see in an MMORTS?

One Month of Soylent: Day 3

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Drinking nothing but shakes gets a touch monotonous. Today I decided to get a little creative!

Getting Creative with Soylent

Soylent pancake's slogan would be: It's solid.

Soylent pancake’s slogan would be: It’s solid.

One of the promises of the Soylent diet is that it will liberate you from food. All that messy nonsense of planning meals, cooking, and cleaning up after are a thing of the past (to say nothing of the time spent measuring, mixing, and cleaning up after the soylent). Of course, I actually like food, and I consider cooking one of my hobbies. I want to be liberated from food like a pig wants to be liberated from a mud bath.

Today I woke up needing to eat something, but instead of ditching the soylent diet three days in, I decided to get creative. Today I made pancakes and eggs.

The eggs were simple enough. Heat up some olive oil in a pan, toss in the eggs, baste them so they get nice and greasy. Since the oil is part of my diet for the day, I can hardly feel guilty for eating eggs swimming in oil. A little bit of hot sauce made the eggs quite lovely. Shout out to Choperena for the suggestion!

The pancakes were different. To make the pancakes I mixed 1 meal’s worth of the Ketofood soylent powder with 1/4 cup melted coconut oil and 1/4 cup water. Beat with a whisk until it reaches the consistency of pancake batter, and let sit. I actually think it would have been better if I let it sit in the fridge over night, but I can’t say I’ve tried it. Then, heat up a bit of coconut oil in a pan, pour in the pancake mix, and cover to cook until the pancake is lightly browned, flipping over once.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend them as anything higher than a health food, but they have that amazing quality of actually being solid. The experience was completely different than a normal pancake. Where a normal pancake is light, fluffy, and mildly sweet, this pancake was thick, heavy, and tasted vaguely meaty. I wouldn’t want to put maple syrup on this pancake, even if I could, but I’m considering mixing up a hollandaise sauce for it next time. As for the texture, the pancake came out pretty dry and grainy. I think letting the mix sit over night would fix the graininess, while a high temperature pan and shorter cook time would help keep the pancake from getting too dry. The aforementioned hollandaise sauce wouldn’t hurt, either.

Overall, I would call the experiment of cooking with soylent a success. The biggest thing a soylent diet lacks is variety, and this certainly helped to break the monotony of the shakes. I have some things planned for the ongoing ketosis recipe that take advantage of the coconut flour in it, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

The rest of the soylent

World's least interesting food blogger.

World’s least interesting food blogger.


I actually consumed more than half of my calories at breakfast. Both eggs, half of the coconut oil and olive oil for the day, and one third of my day’s soylent powder went into that meal. Everything else went into the shake, as usual.

Today’s shake was much less gritty than the last few. My guess is that it’s because I switched from solid coconut grease over to the liquid MCT oil, but I really can’t be certain because the shake’s composition was so different today. Tomorrow, I’ll get confirmation on that when everything goes into the shake again.

How I felt

I really felt satisfied after breakfast today. I don’t know if it’s because I ate more calories than normal or if it’s because I actually had something solid sitting in my belly, but it was nice to feel sated.

Throughout most of the day I felt fairly good. A little hungry now and then, but the less gritty soylent seemed to do the trick.

I didn’t get a chance to hit the gym today. Summer hours at Penn State means the gym is closed on Saturday and only runs limited hours on Sunday. I decided to take a 2 mile walk at the end of the day just to make sure I didn’t spend the whole day lounging around like a sack of potatoes.

Near the end of my walk, though, I really started to feel exhausted. Sore limbs, soreness in my sides (near my kidneys), and just a general desire to lay down and stop moving. I drank another glass of potassium infused broth, and while it lessened the symptoms somewhat, I still felt pretty miserable. At this point I’m wondering if there’s anything else I might be missing,

Daily Status: Day 3

Sleep: 1:00 AM – 9:45 AM (8.75 hours)
Food today: 2 eggs, 1 soylent pancake, 2x induction phase ketosis soylent (minus the eggs and pancake ingredients), 1 glass chicken broth with potassium citrate
Distance walked: ~2 miles
Workout: None (gym closed on Saturday)
Weight: 187.6 lb
Waist: 34″
Hips: 42.75″
Feeling: Fatigued, sore (especially legs and sides)

One Month of Soylent: Day 2

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Another day, another bottle of soylent downed. Here are my experiences from day 2 of my soylent experiment.

Recipe change

That's two whole meals in a glass!

That’s two whole meals in a glass!

As I mentioned yesterday, I wanted to make a change to make the soylent a little more thick. I cut the water by a lot and added ice, making the final product something like a thick smoothie. It was probably a bit too thick…it didn’t want to pour through the opening of my shaker cup. But I was able to add more water to it throughout the day to get the consistency right.

Tomorrow will be better, a slight increase in water should be about perfect.

How I felt

After breakfast today I felt satisfied, and didn’t feel like a water balloon. But throughout most of the day I felt rather hungry, and by the time evening rolled around I started to get a bit of a headache. This is expected for the onset of ketosis, but it’s still uncomfortable, and I’m looking into solutions to it. Edit: Looks like it might be a low electrolyte problem, but since the mix is already as salty as I can handle, I’m gonna fix the problem by drinking some chicken broth.

Also, in terms of energy, I felt pretty sluggish most of the day, though I did get myself to the gym for a decent workout.

On the bright side, that probably means ketosis is kicking in, which is a plus.

Daily Status: Day 2

Sleep: 1:15 AM – 9:30 AM (8.25 hours)
Food today: Induction phase ketosis soylent (mixed with 1l water) x3 meals
Distance walked: <1 mile Workout: Inclined machine bench press (10 x 20 lb/arm), Leg press (10 x 90 lb), Rowing machine (765 m), Bicycle kicks (3 sets x 40 reps), Reverse Crunch (19 reps) Weight: 188.6 lb Waist: 34" Hips: 42.75" Feeling: Hungry, headachey, sluggish.

One Month of Soylent: Day 1

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Today was my first day on the soylent diet. Here were my experiences for the day.

Mixing the Soylent

The whole gang's here.

The whole gang’s here.

Mixing the soylent can be kind of a pain. Here you can see everything needed to make a day of my ketogenic soylent. There’s the soylent powder I mixed up last week, the coconut oil (a stopgap while I wait for my shipment of MCT oil), olive oil, two eggs, and the multivitamins. Don’t skip the multivitamins on this diet!

Ready to be mixed!

Ready to be mixed!

This is before I added extra water. It's about the consistency of a smoothie here.

This is before I added extra water. It’s about the consistency of a smoothie here.

The recommended serving directions call for everything to be mixed with 3 liters of water for the day. That’s a lot, even for my big blender, so I decided to work in stages. First, I mixed everything with about 0.5 liters of water and blended it until smooth (about 1 minute). Then, I reserved half of the soylent smoothy and filled the blender up to 1.5 liters. After blending that, I poured the first batch in the bistro pitcher. Then I repeated with the second half of the reserved smoothy.

That's a lot of soylent!

That’s a lot of soylent!

Drinking the Soylent

Here goes nothing!

Here goes nothing!

Different mixes have different flavors, depending on what goes in them. The official soylent has a lot of oat flour, and apparently ends up tasting a lot like oat milk (and also a little sweet). This one has virtually no carbs, so it has a completely different flavor profile.

This soylent tastes kind of like bland peanut butter with an alkaline aftertaste. I’m not sure if it’s the chia seeds, but it’s got a lot of loose fibers as well. The worst part, though, is how much water there is. At 1 liter per meal, drinking this much alkaline-nut-water is an ordeal. And I think the only way I got through it was by using my protein shaker, so I wouldn’t have to smell the stuff while I drank it. For a while after drinking my first meal, I felt unpleasantly full.

By the end of the day, I was used to the taste. Letting the drink chill really helped it to become more quaffable.

I believe their aiming for the consistency of milk, but I don’t think that’s a good choice for this particular mix. If it’s going to taste as oily and nutty as this, I want the mix to be smooth and thick. Actually, the consistency of my initial stage is probably just about right! Moreover, the the mixture was fairly warm (it had to be to keep the coconut oil from solidifying), but I plan to remedy this by adding ice to the blender after the initial smoothy is complete.

On a side note, I think the addition of chocolate and coconut flour for next week will balance well with the nuttiness. The ongoing ketosis mix will probably be a lot more pleasant.

How I felt

It’s hard to say how I felt today. While at work I had a headache for about 5 minutes, though that’s not unusual for me. After my workout I felt really hungry for a nice piece of grilled chicken, and still felt hungry after throwing back 22 oz of the shake. I did have a short bout near the end of my work day where I felt extra alert and focused, and I rode that feeling to get a few last-minute things done that I’ve been putting off for a bit too long.

The main thing I felt was a weird sense that my stomach was full, but I was hungry. My soylent has me running at about a 700 calorie deficit, and the huge amount of water in the soylent can’t quite trick my stomach into thinking I’m getting a full day’s meals. Couple that with a constant need to pee, and I’m seeing some real benefits to reducing the water in my soylent mix tomorrow.

Daily Status: Day 1

Sleep: 1:30 AM – 9:45 AM (8.25 hours)
Food today: Induction phase ketosis soylent (mixed with 3l water) x3 meals
Distance walked: ~5 miles (to school and back + a nice walk while on the phone)
Workout: Inclined shoulder press (9 x 35 lbs/arm), Close-grip supinated pull-downs (10 x 100 lbs), Machine crunches (10 x 50 lbs), Bicycle kicks (40). All weight sets at a 5 up/5 down cadence, weights chosen for failure at 10 reps.
Weight: 190.6 lb
Waist: 34″
Hips: 42.75″
Feeling: Slightly hungry, alert.

< To day 0

One Month of Soylent: Day 0

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You may have heard of soylent, the unfortunately named food replacement shake that seeks to change the way people eat. The basic premise is simple, make a shake that has all the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that the body needs, and consume that instead of food. The creator hopes this will revolutionize the world by creating a new staple food, and he claims that this is a truly unique idea. While the goal may be far off and the claims hyperbolic, the idea of a food that’s nutritionally complete, convenient, and inexpensive certainly has its appeal. So, as a true neophile, I felt the need to give this unusual diet a shot.

Planning

I didn’t want to jump into a huge diet change blindly. I began by researching the official Soylent recipe (which is available online from the creator) at Soylent.me. From what I could tell, the official recipe is high in carbohydrates and fills out its macronutrients with oat flour. That almost immediately put the official stuff out of the running for me, since I gravitate towards low carb (or at least low glycemic index) diets. Also, regular soylent isn’t really meant to be a diet shake, since it has enough calories to maintain a regular body weight. Over time, you might lose pounds, but since my goal is to lose a significant amount of weight, the official mix wasn’t going to do it.

This set me to searching around the net for a good ketogenic soylent recipe, which eventually led me to QuidNYC’s Ketofood (which comes in Induction and Ongoing flavors). After checking my numbers with the Keto Calculator, I made sure that the amount of protein and calories were right for my weight and muscle goals. As it turns out, Quid’s recipe was already where I wanted to be on both, so I had almost no modifications to make! The only small change I made was to add eggs to the mix, since the original recipe has no cholesterol, and I’ve seen some dietary recommendations for a moderate amount of cholesterol to encourage testosterone production. After balancing the macronutrients for the added eggs, I had my working recipe and ordered everything off of Amazon.

Preparation

I had to do a few things to prepare for my soylent diet.

First off, I cleaned out my fridge and made it a point to eat tasty food for a week. I’m a self avowed foodie, and I needed to have some delicious tacos de lengua before I could give up on food for a month.

Next, I made a record of my health at the beginning of the experiment. I took a picture of myself, weighed in at 190.6 lbs, and measured my waist and hips at 34″ and 42.75″, respectively. Judging my body fat by eye, I’d put myself around 22% body fat, though the navy calculation says I’m at 17% (lies). I’d love to have a real body fat measurement, but impedance measurements are flaky and there aren’t any good places to measure it in town. Finally, I got a blood sample taken by Walk-In-Lab so I could compare things like blood cholesterol and blood glucose levels.

Finally, I picked up a glass pitcher and protein shaker for storing my drinks in. Shakes like this are notorious for getting smelly after sitting out, and I figured non-porous glass would be the best way to keep all my drinkware clean and sanitary.

The Rules

It’s important to set ground rules for this diet going in. My goal is not to see if I can survive solely on soylent for a month (as others have done), but to lose weight and get healthy, with soylent as my tool to make that job easier. I don’t want to give up social engagements that center on food (most do, really), so here are the rules.

  • 90-95% of my meals in a week should be soylent.
  • Non-soylent meals should stick with my ketogenic ratio to maintain ketosis (low carb, high fat, high protein).
  • Sleep at least 8 hours a night.
  • Keep a diary on how I feel every day. Keep an eye out for negative trends, and post the diary online so other people can recognize if depression starts to set in.
  • Weigh and measure every day.
  • Even when eating non-soylent meals: No alcohol, no desserts.

I don’t need to include drink enough water, because I do that impulsively. Getting exercise (weight training) is a goal, as well, but it’s not specifically part of this diet.

Tomorrow, the diet begins!

Daily Status: Day 0

Food today: Lunch – 2 lengua tacos, 2 chicken tacos, beans
Dinner – hotdog (topped with blue cheese, bbq sauce, bacon, onion rings), chips, 2 beers
Dessert – a slice of cheesecake.
Feeling: Tired.

To day 1 >

Who voted for and against SB1062

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Legislative districts’ representatives voted for and against the controversial SB1062 bill

By now we’re all familiar with SB1062, the tremendously controversial bill that sanctifies discrimination as a valid expression of religious belief. For those interested, here’s the text of the bill, and here are the laws that are currently on the books that it will replace (41-1493 and 41-1493.01). Unfortunately, because of the idiosyncratic way legislative districts are split up in Arizona, it’s tough to know who voted for or against this bill. I’m here to lay it out for you as simply as possible. Links are to email the representative directly. This information was all gleaned from LegiScan and the Arizona Legislator’s own website.

I’ve given short descriptions of the districts as of the 2010 Arizona redistricting, using this map. But I’m not too familiar with the Phoenix area, so I would graciously accept any corrections in the comments and incorporate them into this post.

Legislators in Favor of SB1062

District 1 (Prescott and surrounding areas) – (R) Sen. Steve Pierce, (R) Rep. Karen Fann, (R) Rep. Andy Tobin

District 5 (Western Arizona, Kingman, Quartzsite, Blythe) – (R) Sen. Kelli Ward, (R) Rep. Sonny Borrelli, (R) Rep. Doris Goodale

District 6 (Mountainous Arizona, Flagstaff, Sedona, Payson, Heber-Overgaard, Snowflake) – (R) Sen. Chester Crandell, (R) Rep. Brenda Barton, (R) Rep. Bob Thorpe

District 8 (Area between Tucson and Phoenix north of I-10, Globe, Florence, Coolidge, Oracle, Casa Grande) – (R) Rep. Frank Pratt, (R) Rep. T.J. Shope

District 11 (Area between Tucson and Phoenix south of I-10, Marana, Catalina, Saddlebrooke, Oro Valley, Maricopa) – (R) Sen. Al Melvin, (R) Rep. Adam Kwasman, (R) Rep. Steve Smith

District 12 (Gilbert) – (R) Sen. Andy Biggs, (R) Rep. Warren Petersen, (R) Rep. Eddie Farnsworth

District 13 (West Phoenix, Yuma, Wickenberg) – (R) Sen. Don Shooter, (R) Rep. Steve Montenegro, (R) Rep. Darin Mitchell

District 14 (Southeast Arizona, Vail, Benson, Sierra Vista, Bisbee, Douglas, Safford, Wilcox, Pearce) – (R) Sen. Gail Griffin, (R) Rep. David M. Gowan Sr., (R) Rep. David W. Stevens

District 15 (Far North Phoenix) – (R) Sen. Nancy Barto*, (R)  Rep. John Allen

District 16 (Apache Junction) – (R) Sen. David Farnsworth, (R) Rep. Kelly Townsend, (R) Rep. Doug Coleman

District 17 (Chandler) – (R) Sen. Steve Yarbrough*, (R) Rep. Thomas Forese, (R) Rep. Javan “J.D.” Mesnard

District 18 (South Phoenix, Ahwatukee Foothills) – (R) Sen. John McComish, (R) Rep. Jeff Dial, (R) Rep. Bob Robson

District 20 (Phoenix, North Mountain) – (R) Sen. Kimberly Yee, (R) Rep. Paul Boyer, (R) Rep. Carl Seel

District 21 (Peoria) – (R) Sen. Rick Murphy, (R) Rep. Rick Gray, (R) Rep. Debbie Lesko

District 22 (Surprise, Sun City West) – (R) Sen. Judy Burges, (R) Rep. Phil Lovas, (R) Rep. David Livingston

District 23 (Scottsdale, North Scottsdale) – (R) Sen. Michele Reagan, (R) Rep. John Kavanagh, (R) Rep. Michelle Ugenti

District 25 (Northeast Mesa) – (R) Sen. Bob Worsley*, (R) Rep. Justin Olson, (R) Rep. Justin Pierce

District 28 (North Mountain, Paradise Valley) – (R) Sen. Adam Driggs

*Bill sponsor or Cosponsor

Legislators Against of SB1062

District 2 (Nogales, Sahuarita, Green Valley, South Tucson) – (D) Sen. Andrea Dalessandro, (D) Rep. Rosanna Gabaldón, (D) Rep. Demion Clinco

District 3 (West Tucson) – (D) Sen. Olivia Cajero Bedford, (D) Rep. Sally Ann Gonzales, (D) Rep. Macario Saldate IV

District 4 (Southwest Arizona, Ajo, Three Points, Somerton) – (D) Sen. Lynne Pancrazi, (D) Rep. Juan Carlos Escamilla, (D) Rep. Lisa Otondo

District 7 (Northeast Arizona Mountains and Plateau, Show Low, Pinetop-Lakeside, Springerville, St. Johns) – (D) Sen. Carlyle Begay, (D) Rep. Jamescita Peshlakai, (D) Rep. Albert Hale

District 8 (Area between Tucson and Phoenix north of I-10, Globe, Florence, Coolidge, Oracle, Casa Grande) – (D) Sen. Barbara Mcguire

District 9 (North Tucson, Catalina Foothills, Casas Adobes) – (D) Sen. Steve Farley, (R) Rep. Ethan Orr, (D) Rep. Victoria Steele

District 10 (East Tucson, Tanque Verde) – (D) Sen. David Bradley, (D) Rep. Stefanie Mach, (D) Rep. Bruce Wheeler

District 15 (Far North Phoenix) – (R)  Rep. Heather Carter

District 19 (West Phoenix, Estrella Village) – (D) Sen. Anna Tovar, (D) Rep. Lupe Chavira Contreras, (D) Rep. Mark A. Cardenas

District 24 (Encanto Village, Camelback East) – (D) Sen. Katie Hobbs, (D) Rep. Chad Campbell, (D) Rep. Lela Alston

District 26 (Tempe, Mesa) – (D) Sen. Ed Ableser, (D) Rep. Andrew Sherwood, (D) Rep. Juan Mendez

District 27 (Central Phoenix, South Mountain Village, Laveen Village) – (D) Sen. Leah Landrum Taylor, (D) Rep. Ruben Gallego, (D) Rep. Catherine H. Miranda

District 28 (North Mountain, Paradise Valley) – (R) Rep. Kate Brophy McGee, (D) Rep. Eric Meyer 

District 29 (West Glendale) – (D) Sen. Steve Gallardo, (D) Rep. Martín J. Quezada, (D) Rep. Lydia Hernández

District 30 (East Glendale) – (D) Sen. Robert Meza, (D) Rep. Jonathan Larkin, (D) Rep. Debbie McCune Davis

Key points

This bill was split quite clearly across party lines, with no democrats in favor of SB1062 and only 3 republicans against the bill (District 9 Ethan Orr from North Tucson, District 15 Heather Carter from north of Phoenix, District 28 Kate Brophy McGee from North Mountain/Paradise Valley Phoenix). Legislative districts were not very split on the issue, with only 3 districts having any division between legislators (Districts 8 between Tucson and Phoenix, District 15 north of Phoenix, District 28 North Mountain/Paradise Valley). In general, Tucson was against the bill, rural Arizona was in favor of the bill, and the Phoenix metropolitan area split between its constituent divisions and neighborhoods.

Ongoing developments

2/24/14 – Bill cosponsor (R) Sen. Bill Worsley, as well as (R) Sen. Steve Pierce and (R) Sen. Adam Driggs have pulled support for this bill, publicly requesting Gov. Brewer to veto it. News story here. If they had changed their votes earlier, the bill would have lost in the senate 14-16.

Why I’m not a prescriptivist

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Last night I almost got into a heated debate with a friend over the use of the “singular they” as a gender-neutral pronoun. I’ll leave my personal opinion on that topic until the end, but suffice it to say, the argument got broken up before we could spend the entire evening fighting between descriptivist and prescriptivist philosophies on language.

Now, I love language. My obsession with language is deep and unabiding. I sometimes refer to myself as a hobbyist linguist, and I know at least enough linguistic terminology to follow the posters at the Acoustical Society of America conferences (linguistics and acoustics have a lot in common). I can still remember the computational linguistics poster that was posted in the applied mathematics department at my undergrad, where an epidemiological model was used to model language boundaries in a multi-lingual society.

And as much as I like to consider the behaviors and evolution of languages, I’m even more interested in the philosophy of linguistics. What is language? Is it invented or discovered? Do we use language or does language use us?

Personally, I subscribe to the belief that language is alive as a sort of “thought organism” that exists within and exerts order over information systems. In the same way that organic life organizes and assembles chemicals such that it can replicate itself in exact (or near exact) form, words and grammar organize information in such a way that it can be propagated and maintained. I would argue that language is older than humanity, with signs of regional language and dialects existing in other intelligent animals, and that our relationship with language is strongly symbiotic. The fact that our brains are organized for the acquisition of language reminds me of animals with glands and organs specifically designed to host helpful microorganisms, without whom the animal could not survive.

Such a view of language puts me squarely in the linguistic descriptivist camp. I approach language much like how a zoologist approaches animals, with an eye for development, evolution, and taxonomy. To say that a certain language construction is “wrong,” assuming it is still understood and unambiguous, is like saying that a subspecies of animal shouldn’t exist because it doesn’t look like its neighbors. I would never suggest that the Pyrrhuloxia shouldn’t exist because it’s different than the Northern Cardinal, but the arguments of linguistic prescriptivists sound just like that to me.

That said, I understand that language prescriptivism has its place. Many people use language as a tool, including writers, publishers, and journalists. If languages are animals, then the language wielded by these groups are like purpose-bred work animals. And much like how working breeds often have breed standards that the animals are expected to conform to, there are standards for language codified by groups like the MLA.

Carrying the animal breeding analogy further, breed standards are usually a combination of necessary and arbitrary rules which differentiate breeds. Necessary in this context referring to those traits important to the animal’s task (like how pointer dogs should have the “pointing” behavior while hunting), while arbitrary relates to traits like coloration, which are not relevant to the animal’s purpose. Likewise, some linguistic rules help to reduce ambiguity in specific situations, and others establish style. Thinking of purposeful rules, I’m reminded of the precision/accuracy distinction, where colloquial english uses them interchangeably, but scientific jargon enforces a clear distinction. Considering stylistic rules, the “split infinitive” construction possesses no syntactic ambiguity but was considered incorrect for a long time simply because of tradition.

This brings me back to the topic at hand, the “singular they.” Keeping in mind that prescriptivism has a purpose, I still feel that the singular they should be adopted by style guides for one simple reason:  keeping up with the times. Perhaps previous generations could tolerate a “generic he,” because the assumption of masculinity as the default would not be challenged. But I feel that in a modern world that is more inclusive of everyone in our society, adopting a gender neutral pronoun should be an imperative for advancing social justice. And considering how difficult it is to adopt new pronouns in a non-pro-drop language, it’s probably only realistic to use the gender-neutral pronoun that’s been in use for 700 years already: the singular they.

Moreover, from a personal standpoint, I find both the “generic he” and the “generic she” to be syntactically confusing, because they seem to suggest a determinant person. Whenever I encounter either construction in writing, I inevitably scan back through the paragraph to find what subject is being referred to, only to find that it’s being used generically.

A problem that’s been observed with linguistic prescriptivism is that it can often be too conservative and ultimately obstruct natural evolution in a language. I think the wider use of the singular they is such an evolution, and one that’s predicated on society’s pursuit of greater social justice. With that in mind, we should allow such progress to continue and relax those rules that obstruct it.

Why the “Perfect Feminist” doesn’t exist

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I don’t plan to make commentary on feminist issues a regular topic of discussion. Without belaboring the point, there are female-feminists out there who believe that a man simply cannot be a proper feminist, and will short circuit any disagreement within feminism by claiming the other person only holds the opposite opinion “because they are a man.” Obviously, this is not true of every feminist, and I’ve personally never been challenged with this argument, but I’ve watched it happen in open forums enough that I’m gun shy about voicing my opinions.

With that out of the way, I saw an interesting article asking “Who is the better feminist: Lily Allen or Miley Cyrus?” The crux of the article is that Miley Cylus takes ownership of her sexuality but is still allowing herself to be sexualized, and Lily Allen is righteously angry and takes on the patriarchy and its oppression head on. Apparently, we have to pick a side; one of these is the “true” feminism. One of these women is a “better feminist.”

In my mind, this is a forced dichotomy, and the concept of one feminist being better than another is simply baffling. To me, a large part of modern feminism is choice. Society may tell you what is “right” and “proper” for a woman, specifically telling you where you should sit in terms of feminine and masculine qualities, but you have the right to completely ignore them and find your own way. If the problem with the patriarchy is that it tells women who to be, then feminism isn’t really going anywhere if all it says is that you have to be the opposite simply to be contrarian.

To that end, there is no such thing as the “perfect” feminist. If feminism is about choice, and it’s impossible for a single person to embody all choices simultaneously, then it’s impossible for that single person to be perfect.

Take, for example, the question of a woman’s sexuality. On the one hand, a woman “should” express their sexuality and have as many partners as they can to stand up against prudish cultural norms and slut shaming. On the other hand, a woman “should” dress in a non-provacative and gender neutral way to stand up against the objectification of women. Likewise, a woman “should” be sexually selective to stand up against a male-benefitting hookup culture that plays right into our pervasive rape culture. Likewise, a woman “should” be willing to be feminine, because femininity is equal to masculinity, and stand up against growing cultural moods that invalidate women who do not “act like men.”

Those are all valid stances for a feminist to take, but I don’t think it’s too hard to see why some of them are mutually exclusive.

I think the best way to go about this is to create a “Pantheon” of women (and men!) who exemplify all the different and valid ways to express gender. Variety is the name of the game here. Try to find conscientiously feminine women, bold sexually liberated women, masculine women, respectful and masculine men, effeminate straight men, effeminate gay men, transgendered people, etc. We should raise all of those up on a pedestal and say “Take your pick. It’s your choice!”

With that in mind, who are some people you would put in your gender pantheon? Feel free to include fictional characters too, since they can be just as inspiring.