Teaching Chess to Boy Scouts

One of the Boy Scouts of America coordinators sent a message to the president of the local chess club, who then forwarded it to me and my father.  We will be doing an all-day chess merit badge workshop soon with groups of 20 scouts.  I'm really looking forward to this; they seem very well-organized.  They even sent me the requirements of the merit badge and a copy of the worksheet the scouts can use to study!  For more information, see the BSA's chess merit badge page.

The God of the Rand() Function

Time to wander into theology, yes?  Yes!  Disclaimer: I don't have any theology degrees or experience, so this might get really incorrect really fast.

Alright, so as human understanding of physical science gets deeper, it would become increasingly more difficult to hide intelligent intervention as a random event in some unpredictable layer.  Assuming there is some intelligent agent beyond space and time (which is easier to refer to as "God"), such an agent would probably want to conceal some of its interventions, such as causing a person via MapQuest to take one turn on a road trip that would otherwise be less efficient but puts said person in a situation of spiritual growth.  (I don't have any theology degrees or really any experience, so this might get really incorrect really fast.)  When humanity was in its early stages with few people on any major road at a time, a God might spawn an obstruction in a road fork without the instant appearance of said rock being noticed.  As humanity is able to survey and detect more changes, a God needs to make changes at a lower level such as the subatomic level to avoid getting noticed.  Eventually, I support pseudo-random number generators in computers will be one of the very few event sources left that cannot be monitored.  When humanity is at such a state, the only alternatives for a God to set an event in motion will be actual random number generators (e.g. uranium decay) and the weird shaking of the quantum layer, which is technically totally unpredictable.  Perhaps this is why such a God might create the quantum layer in the universe?

I guess that was theology-ish...

YouTube: The Problem of Discovery

It's hard to get started on YouTube.  Everyone wants to be famous, but no matter how awesome your videos are, it's unlikely your subscriber base will suddenly take off.  This video (not mine; rated PG-13) explains the issue and presents a solution that will get the best channels a subscriber base:

Incommunicado Alert

I'll be leaving for Camp Manitowish on September 3 and will be away from all electronics and Internet stuff until September 7.  During that time, automatic posts will go up at Fleex's Lab.  I know that date is a long way off, but this place doesn't get much attention, so I should probably write about it before I forget.  I'm really looking forward to this school trip because it means I can take a break from Rivermont work.  BHC classes won't be a problem because the module dates are set in such a way that I can do one module before I leave and another soon after I get back.  It might be kind of tough the few days after I get back, but the vacation is definitely worth it.

Argh

After three days of school, I need a vacation.  There is no way I am going to be able to do everything I have to without staying up two extra hours every night.  Enrolling in ECON 222 was probably a terrible mistake.  All the high school classes are going to start assigning projects all over the place in just a few weeks.  This is pretty much a disaster.

Release Indev Versions?

This might belong better at Fleex's Lab, but this place needed some activity, so here we go.

I'm seriously considering releasing in-development unfinished versions of HigherPower (my Minecraft mod) to the public.  My main aversion to doing so is that I want to shock the mod scene with all the awesomeness in the first ever public release.  Of course, that's probably more self-indulgent than appropriate; I should let the people decide if my concepts are sound.  If people in general don't like what I'm doing, I should save myself a lot of trouble and learn that now.  Another argument against prereleases is that I shouldn't get the public's hopes up before (hopefully not, but possibly) abandoning it, WildStar-style.  HigherPower is a much better concept than WildStar, but I don't want to fail again and gain a reputation as the modder who doesn't finish anything.  Then again, if it dies in secret, it would be sad for absolutely nobody to know what could have been.  Also, I might accidentally create fans of a particular aspect who would be very disappointed if that aspect was removed later.  Then again, it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all, or so says the saying.  So, I'm left undecided.  Should I release actual downloads of HigherPower's indev stages?

The Perseids 2013

If you're into astronomy, you'll know that the Perseid meteor shower is going to peak tomorrow night.  The popular astronomy club of my area came out to the PRC observatory and had its annual picnic, which I attended.  The food was amazing, but the main feature was the occasional meteor.  Some members brought "go-to" telescopes and allowed everyone to view various astronomical objects.  It was really awesome to view the objects in the M catalog.  I just might stay up tomorrow to see the peak, which is expected to have 70-100 meteors per hour.

Wikipedia Immersion

While waiting for a few chess games to be over, I hit "random page" on Wikipedia many times and read many articles.  As I read some of those articles, I saw more than a few errors that I could have easily corrected and some stubs to which I could add information without much effort.  I soon realized that one could spend an entire lifetime reading Wikipedia and editing articles that are of interest.  Of course, I do not have that much time on my hands, but it would be fun just to spend an evening or two cleaning up some corner of the internet's encyclopedia.

Start Broad, Get Narrow

I think I've discovered the way to become well-known on YouTube.  You need to start by doing a wide array of things -- I do Minecraft, Commander Keen, programming, and chess on my channel.  Then, you can share your content in a lot of places.  Some series will be unsuccessful, but the ones that are will attract many viewers if you share your content in the right places.

This strategy might even have application in the world of business.  HP started as a very unfocused company, even reaching into agriculture.  It soon became known for its computer manufacturing and became very successful.

People like to see a lot.  There's a marketing adage, "the more they see, the more they buy."  While your YouTube channel may not be monetized (I personally will never subject my viewers to in-stream ads), showing a wide array of content will watch what interests them and then they just might check out other content from you.