Circusing

Yesterday I went to the circus.

I am extremely fortunate in that a friend of mine performs in Cirque Du Soleil's Kooza show, and he invited me to come see the show and showed me around backstage afterwards. Backstage was excellent, but I must confess I was still reeling from the show itself.

I haven't been to the circus since I was a kid, unless you count the time I saw a Cirque Du Soleil show in Vegas. The title of that show was O, which could very well have stood for 'over my head.'

Contrary to all my previous circus-going experiences, the tent was quite cozy, with even the furthest row of seats commanding excellent views of the action. And of action there was plenty. A complete collection of circus acts - trapeze artists, tightrope walkers, contortionists, unicycles, you name it - melded with Cirque Du Soleil choreography and costumery.

The clown with a crown! His very existence is anathema
to native Japanese speakers.

But each of these acts are like pearls - beautiful individually, but with a string to hold them all together, exquisite. That string was the clowns, and my friend was their king. No, not metaphorically. He had a crown and everything.

The clowns were the comic relief, the easing of the tension, the breath taken after a death-defying act spiraled to its climax. They were the distraction as costumes, people, and sets were changed, props were set up. Who could possibly spare a moment to glance at people hoisting ropes when clowns are running amuck, hitting people with a nice ribeye steak?

(Upon reflection, the sheer thickness and size of the steak was wildly ambitious for Japan. If it were a real steak, it would probaly cost in the neighborhood of $50 here.)

Over beers afterwards, he told me that there were a number of jokes that they had to rework due to cultural differences. One example was a joke that in North America had been about female empowerment; nobody laughed at it here, so after frantic experimentation they hit upon a variation where avoidance of responsibility and blaming the innocent was the punchline* - then everyone got a kick out of it.

*The original joke was that they would take a female audience member and have her whack one of the clowns in the balls with the much-abused steak. The revised joke involved the king snatching the steak away, hitting the other clown in the balls, and handing it back to her - then, when the victim looked back in indignation, the king would finger the hapless audience member as the culprit. It's a classy show, as it should be.


Also, some of the lines that required audience comprehension were in Japanese. Whether the audience was laughing at them because their actions were funny, they used funny, exaggerated voices, or just because they were foreign clowns speaking in Japanese, was not really clear.

I should also mention briefly that the acts were very sensual, at times stunningly so.

You haven't been to the circus in years. They're not as popular as they used to be. Go check one out instead of just going to the movie theater. It's a great time. If you're in the SF Bay Area, I hear Teatro Zinzani is good. It's on Embarcadero and you've walked by it 100 times. (So have I.)

Also, quit being so down on clowns. Or I will hit you with a dead cow.

Things I worked on today:

• Posted a blog entry
• Programming
• Photos
• Reaching out to people who can help me in my job search

Stunningly productive.

Tomorrow:

• An application for an English teaching job.
• Finish up the Brasil photo set.

Decided not to implement collision detection here.

The programming I did today was to get objects moving around onscreen in response to touch commands. Then I did a fairly rudimentary simulation of acceleration by periodically updating the speed the object moved at. I took advantage of this to also update the direction the object is moving in, which is prrretty cool.

These will eventually have to become vectors, and instead of doing movement actions over time, I'll primarily be updating the locations directly. I'm enjoying making things happen, but for now it's buggy as hell and the code is poorly organized, so while I did clean out some gunk today, to follow up, tomorrow I would like to do some:

• Refactoring. Is the technical word for it. But I'm an editor, and this looks like a nail, so I'm going to whip out my trusty hammer. (Protip: the hammer is my editing, according to Captain Hammer.)

For idiomatic smoothies that are incomprehensible yet delicious, take two parts metaphor and one part pop culture reference and set blenders to "mix."

Then enjoy.

15 Minutes of Fame

When the earthquake happened, I was on the way home on the Chuo line. The train had just pulled into Akihabara station when the world went a little crazy.

In the midst of the rocking and rolling, an email arrived on my phone. I imagined friends or family having seen the news on tv and attempting to find out if I was all right. Upon seeing whom it was from - a friend of mine who is a journalist at a major news publication - this idea was reinforced.

I opened the email.

It said, "arr."

DAÑOS SEVEROS Y MUERTE!

I was flabbergasted. For all I knew, the train was about to tumble off the tracks and collapse through the three floors of the station (which I would survive thanks to action hero-like reflexes and brute strength) and all he had for me was a piratical greeting?

I emailed back a rant intended to scorch his soul and fill him with shame for making light of my dire predicament.

He replied, "tell me more."

The results of that were printed in the next day's LA Times. Then it was reprinted all over the place.

It also seemed like a good idea at the time to let my parents know I was not dead. The first thing my father does every morning is sit upon his mighty throne and read the news, so I figured he would be aware of the earthquake and deeply concerned. However, his unhurried reply was, "Yeah, I already read you were alive in the paper. Also," he told me, the Orlando Sun-Sentinel and ABC news wanted to interview me.

Reveling in my newfound popularity, I quickly agreed.

The ABC interview was recorded by parents via iPhone and stitched together by me with iMovie, which I provide here for your entertainment.

Lessons learned:

• I say "um" way too damned much.
• When TV stations tell you they're doing the interview via Skype, yes, it will be video. Shave. Put on a nice shirt.
• Look directly at the camera. Do not permit its medusa-like gaze to turn you to stone.
• Brasil represeeeent!
• It's all too easy to become a whore for attention after that first tantalizing taste.

Easy come, easy go.

On the Relentless Death Engines of Isaac Newton

Assumptions were made.

Specifically, that if I planned to create a game simulating, to some extent, the vagaries of Newtonian space, that I would need to employ what is, in the parlance of les programmeurs, a "physics engine."

Physics: it's everywhere!

Upon consideration and note-taking and scribbling (in the fine iPad app known as Penultimate, though I prefer Notes Plus for things I might need to present to others) I realized that it may be possible to emulate a number of physics-like properties by extending cocos2d sprites without subjecting myself to the agony of physics frameworks.

Not that physics frameworks aren't wonderful things. It's just that Box2d and Chipmunk are in C++ and C, respectively, and I'd like to get a better handle on cocos2d itself before moving on to new jungles with new tigers.

I lost track of which was which.

The plan was to do a cage match, in which the framework which caused me less cognitive stress in the tutorial would emerge victorious. But since both made me want to stab my cranium with chopsticks* this plan was abandoned in favor of extending CCSprite and just faking the physics till I have no alternative, at which point the algorithms should be transferable and my grasp of cocos2d should be firmer.

Which is to say, my verdict on the Box2d vs Chipmunk non-debate is: they both suck if this is your first try at making a game. Chipmunk has an Obj-C port which is super exciting up to the moment you find out it costs $200 to license. And the separation between the physical representation of your world and the visual representation of your world is frustrating. Perhaps as I continue I'll find a good reason for this. Objective-C's delegates would seem to lend themselves to conveniently adding physical properties and interaction to visual objects, or vice versa, but alas.

A brief note on tutorials available: there is indeed a lovely series right here, but it includes some unsavory coding practices, including magic numbers, poor factoring, and unnecessarily costly algorithms.

* A maneuver indicating distress of the brain, immortalized by the renowned pop culture commentator R. Cota after being subjected to the film 'Gone in 60 Seconds.'

Delicious BBQ

Delicious kalbi beef, sausage, and veggies, oh my! Not counting the vast quantity of wonderful and unique non-grilled dishes, like the inari with soba inside instead of rice, or the prosciutto inexplicably on radish. Ah yes, and brigadeiro contributed by yours truly, which was not perfect, but not an abject failure either.

The abject failure is sitting in my fridge. Where I will nibble at it until it goes away, or until I find a victim. It tastes right, but the consistency is totally screwed up. I am ashamed. I may have to give back my Brasilian passport.

Anyway, let's hear a hallelujah for carports. Otherwise the BBQ would have been doomed. Doomed. Allegedly it's a typhoon, but if so, where's the wind? Not a patch on a proper hurricane, I tell you.

I am aware that this seemingly contradicts my thesis. But Ron is
sitting at the table, so if you think about it, it really doesn't.

There seems to be something universal about people putting meat on a grill: the dudes congregate around it, while the girls hang out at the table. It happens in the states, it happens in Brasil, and it happens in Japan. Whether it's due to the meat or fire or knives (here, chopsticks) or some combination of the three, the result is some weird atavistic "here we be men" thing.

I imagine that regardless of any other local customs, when you see dead animals over a fire on a rest day, you know: dudes over here, chicks over there.

Most of this was typed on the train home. I even feel like I could be productive this evening.

So, this evening I will...

• Finish the cover letter and resume for J.

Tomorrow:

• Spiffy up a spec and send resume to Y
• Investigate 8/4
• chipmunk and box2d cage match

Saturday

Massive brigadeiro cooking failure. Made a new batch from scratch, but I have no idea what to do with the failed stuff. It's still tasty... Just crumbly instead of becoming proper gooey balls.

Frustrated by templates in xcode 4 again.

Feeling wishy-washy about which physics library to use.

Despite feeling like I had gotten a great night's sleep, felt listless and irritable for most of the day. Caffeine withdrawal?

Currently listening to the invisible gorilla. In my head. No, it's a book. It's interesting, but audible.com doesn't seem to have the books I really want to read...

Friday

Ended up staying in due to gray, potentially rainy day.

Today's stuff:

• Did some work for dad.
• Animation tutorial for cocos2d.
• Got touches selecting sprites for game mechanic.
• Started cutting up some free sprites to use.
• Worked on cover letter, mo technical resume for J
• Took a guilt-free break - watched Tangled. A little heavy on the singing, but highly enjoyable. I realize it's a stylistic thing, but sometimes I feel that it's the default for Disney movies. Sweet but not saccharine.

Tomorrow:

• Programming at tsubame café. Draw a line between two selected sprites, move together. Physics tutorials.
• Evening at baachan's place. Flowers for m. Talk to k about resume
• Finish off brigadeiro for Sunday.

Sunday:

• Kikuchi BBQ!