Games and Fun: Magic Pen

When I first heard of "Crayon Physics" through Penny-Arcade's 1/11/09 comic strip, I was really interested in seeing it in action. Believe me, there's quite a few videos of it on YouTube. But this particular visual physics engine is as yet unavailable for people without a tablet pc or an iPhone. So I decided to seek out an online version. And lo and behold, there was "Magic Pen". Although this free online game only has 26 levels, it's plenty. You can keep playing to see the fewest number of shapes needed to finish each level.

For those unfamiliar with "Crayon Physics" or "Magic Pen", these are 2-d physics engines which allow the user to draw elements into the world which interact with existing fixed and moving parts. Your goal for each level is to get the red shape to any and all red flags on the level.

Quirky and fun, the user can create circles and polygons and use hinges and pins to create more complex machines and shapes (you can make a car by making two circles with hinges in the center of each and a box over the hinges). Remember to take gravity into account!

You want me to get the ball to a flag floating in SPACE?!??!

You make it look so easy.

You WILL, however find yourself cursing at flags which are obnoxiously higher than your shape's starting point, or confused by flags which appear to be floating serenely in space. It's a solid challenge that kept me entertained for a good 6 hours last night. I didn't even find the music obnoxious!

To check out Magic Pen by clicking here

Don't leave me now!

The Christmas before I commenced that fabulous 4-year journey to college, my parents did what thousands of parents do for their education-bound children every year. They bought me my first computer. It was a laptop; a Dell Latitude D600 and it was the first computer that was my very own, that I didn't have to share with anybody. It came with a wireless card, and a full suite of Microsoft Office programs, and really, not too much else, save a few music-playing programs. The computer was to be my constant companion through college and beyond. I don't think I realized until very recently how much I have come to rely on my computer for the many aspects of my life.

Aside from my own acute internet addiction, I installed games and Photoshop, Flash and Javascript, Firefox and an interminable parade of various design programs. I downloaded music. I designed posters. I chatted with friends.

My computer was only really a problem in one way - it seemed to HATE peripherals or anything that might become attached to itself by wire. Not too soon after I received my computer in December of 2002, my computer earned itself the name of The iPod Assassin, brutally freezing 4 iPods within minutes of linking up to them, and slowly poisoning the 5th over the course of a year, 'til the poor thing wouldn't hold a battery charge longer than 10 seconds. All this within 3 months of my gleeful unwrapping of my new computer confidant. There were other incidents too, more about those later.

In a way, I invested so much of my love and personna into my comptuer, that it became a part of me, even despite its ocassional angry whirring and amidst it's uppity denials.

But today, it finally happened. The iPod Assassin, my worthy adversary, workspace, and noble trickster of a computer has completely given up on life.

Yesterday he was fine. Today, attempts to restart left only an insidious black screen which claimed that the original set-up file was corrupt and that I needed to install the "original CD-Rom". Dells haven't come with a CD-Rom for yeeeears. Having already transferred all my music to my mac, I'm not too terribly concerned about my media files, but I AM fairly worried about my Adobe Photoshop and CS1 which I only have installed on the PC.

A new copy for my mac will run me about $999. Money I'm not prepared to spend. Also, my Mac has NO internet connection to speak of when I'm at home, which means I'm writing personal thoughts utilizing my work computer. It's bad form. Plus, my work laptop (eerily, the same model as the Assassin) has no AIM to speak of, no firefox and only an old (old, old, old) version of internet explorer. And I'm not allowed to install new programs on it.

Part of me worries that The Assassin somehow knew I'd brought a computer home of the same exact model and decided in its crotchety old way to make me pay for my indecent two-facedness. By finally committing the greatest of all computer sins, suicide.

Be warned: this computer looks normal enough. But actually, it's quite evil.
It has a propensity to overheat to the temperature of a hell-mouth, and attempts to restart
lead to a sad, half-hearted series of whirrs and clicks. Also, it will eat your soul.

I'd always frowned and then laughed it off when it sent it's electronic brethren into the deep electronics void. Killing off iPods left and right; annhialating digital cameras and printers with wild abandon; dooming yet another USB hub to the garbage (3, so far), and growing crankier and crankier in its old age. It even incapacitated the USB-powered lavalamp Techkat gave me for my 20th birthday.

The Assassin is fully 6 years old now, practically ancient for a computer, and I probably should have realized that it was getting on in years, but still, I'd hoped we'd have a bit more time together than this! I'll be bringing him to a friend who's a computer expert tomorrow and hopefully we'll be able to get him back on his feet. What will I do without him? Is it time to start my search for a new Windows-based laptop? What a terrifying thought.

A Short-lived Endeavor

Rosie knows all about women in technology positions.
She probably had to put up with this crap too.

The word of the day, according to Dictionary.com, is "sojourn", meaning a temporary stay or residency. I find this word to be particularly ideal for this day.

Today is the day I'm definitely certain (for real, for real) that my current job is not for me. Like Techkat, and millions of other folks our age, I work with computers for a living. More specifically, I work in hospitals, teaching nurses to use the new programs required for them to do their jobs. My own (however temporary) sojourn has already been a lengthy 4 months in the works, and my contract to stay 6 months ends in a seemingly paltry 6 weeks. Oh, I'm so ready.

I'm fascinated by the concept of learning. I love teaching others to love technology. But at a hospital where many of the nurses are well over 50 years old, many of them immigrants, this is as big a chore as any. It's one thing to teach a new program to people who've used computers before, but it's another thing entirely to have to take such baby steps as teaching someone to double-click, to use Xes to close windows, to right click a particular location. Not that I mind that so much.

Really, the factor that makes my stay at this particular company so unbearable is the way people in my position are treated. We're not nurses, so we're not union. Our schedule is changed on a near-daily basis. We are made to sign and re-sign contracts. We are yelled at for the most mundane of things like sitting ("You're taking a chair away from a nurse!"), checking the news ("Unprofessional behavior"), reading ("pay closer attention to the users!"). These things would all make a lot more sense, if we actually had anything to do in the first place.

The real problem is that our stint at any given location is about 8 weeks longer than we're really needed. We're left with 4 weeks before the nurses use the program -- when they don't want to learn -- and 4 weeks after they've mastered it and don't ask any more questions. Those two busy weeks in between, it's perfectly plausible for a person in our occupation to go an entire 8 hour shift without sitting, without using a computer on our own, without going bored/crazy out of our minds. But in those calm periods? Oh, it's just asking for trouble.

Today, I actually got in trouble for talking to a nurse. I wish I was joking. Although my time at this particular hospital is nearly over, I WILL miss the nurses I've worked with. It's interesting to find a profession that requires delicacy, knowledge, know-how and strength so completely dominated by females.

In the technology sector, women are a rare sight indeed. On my own shift, in my department, there are only two women (myself included) and at least eight men. And true to patterns that have proven themselves my whole life, I constantly struggle to keep users' attentions when the men are around. As the louder, and generally more aggressive gender, they easily talk over me, take my space and redirect other people's comments. While I'm not particularly interested in their ploys for power, I DO want to be taken seriously, and for that, I think it is at times necessary for a woman to summon up the courage to act like a man.

While I won't be looking at sporty cars any time soon, or peeing standing up, I DO aggressively approach problems I face at work. I tell people when I have an issue instead of trying to hide it like I normally would. I try to fix problems that we're not expected to fix (hardware issues are perfectly within my realm of capability, but rarely attempted by my coworkers). Best efforts aside, I know that I shouldn't have to do all this. It's not only exhausting, it's demeaning!

I have two X chromosomes, and I like it that way!

Rearranging our hours, constantly rechecking our schedule, getting in trouble for the most mundane of things . . . it's painful. And I have to wonder, are all tech jobs this way? Or just this one?