I have often heard it said that women don’t dress for men but instead dress for women. But I live in San Francisco and so I dress for gay men. Clearly, they’re the only ones who notice and compliment accordingly. . .

A few things I enjoy about walking downtown include commuting by train, the fascinating architecture that changes through the day thanks to lights-and-shadows, and, the innumerable good-looking women hustling on their way too and from their jobs and classes.

Alas, I know little for architecture or fashion, so I wander down the street gazing in uninformed appreciation of the beauty around me. As far as the trains go, I have to admit that I recently read up on the history of the USSLRV, which Muni was plagued with in the 1980s and 1990s before they got the nice Breda trains they run today.

“Ohhh, darling, is that a Breda LRV3 you’re riding? I really like it! You’re running so quietly with a good maintenance record. That is so hot!”

Well, thank goodness for the gay men in this city, keeping the ladies motivated to heights of fashion that make me smile in uninformed appreciation.

People!  Please!  Hyphen!  Sun-dash-dried . . . dried-by-the-sun!  Sundried reads as “to have made sundry” and “sundry” means “miscellaneous, mixed stuff.”

Sundried!  PAH!  Sun-dried!

Thanks.

Anyway, what interests me is, collaborative / combative politics, supply-chain and market aspects of economy, trade, and, well, the whole enchantment of maps, and moving things around . . . assigning lands to vassals, I suppose, sinking wells, founding / razing towns . . . feedback loops . . . noticing patterns and anticipating changes, and dealing with disasters like bad harvests, invasion, and plague.

Now, I’m not sure that this crazy fantasy game of mine will ever see the light of day. In fact, I have for years been assuming that it will not. But, I keep thinking, and tonight it has gotten far enough that I want to take some notes, and since I don’t have a wiki, well, I guess a blog will do. :) (I’m not organized enough yet for a wiki, and wikis are great for not being organized.)

Here’s a great resource: http://www.hyw.com/books/history/Agricult.htm

Anyway, things I have figured out / learned.
(Also note that just because I think something is worth noting doesn’t mean I necessarily think it should go in my fantasy god game. :)

Distance

- A healthy person can walk 5km/hour, no problem.

- 1 square mile = 640 acres
- 1/4 square mile = 40 acres
- peasant farm family could typically lease 10 acres, up to . . .
- . . . ideally, 24-30 acres (a yardland)
- subsistence family minimum: 5 acres (Does this account for Fallow?)
- so . . . 1/4 square mile supports 1-4 peaseant families, up to 8
- 1 square kilometer = 247 acres (call it 250?) = 10 families @25 acres or 25 familes @10 acres or 50 familes @5 acres

(I kind of like multiples of 5 . . .)

Per-Acre Farming Yields

Fallow

Tradeoff:
1/3 fallow decreases nitrogen / yields
1/2 fallow increases nitrogen / yields

Some Basic Conversions

Barley converts to Ale
Orchard Fruit converts to Cider
Ale, Cider, Fruit, Vegetables, Honey are “luxury” goods
Peasants are happy to consume luxuries . . . but they have to pay taxes

Structural Overview

Need to work out proportions . . . but feudal system was:
- King
- Vassal Lords — “Counties” possibly with castles
- Manors — Estates run by Knights
- Peasants

I’d like to think that the players could start out as Princes and if they can get a few other players to swear loyalty, they work their way up to Kings . . . but if the economy is sufficiently complex / interesting people might take a crack at running Manors or even managing peasant families. (There could be a pricing model . . . start play as a peasant for free, a Knight for very cheap, and so on . . . :)

Economics: Peasants

So, a “peasant family” could be a basic economic “cell” that evolves over time:
- how much land?
- family makeup?
- available seed?
- quality of land . . . nitrogen content
- increase acreage when advantageous
- increase acreage when family size grows
- decrease acreage when family size shrinks
- livestock

A peasant family can have its own (genetic) “formula” for successful farming . . . maybe talents . . . bee-keeping versus shepherding . . . families will be seen to “reproduce” when successful and die off when not-so-successful . . .

One strategic problem would be to set tax rates high enough to fund an ambituous government, but not too high such that new pesant families considered re-settling in “cheaper” (competing) provinces (or, you would manipulate tax policy to favor migration for strategic reasons)

Medieval farmers did more than just grow grain and peas. Most farmers had one or more horses and oxen, two or more milk cows, a few pigs, several dozen sheep or goats, beehives and some chickens. Many farmers kept geese as well. The horses and/or oxen pulled the plow and did other heavy work. The cows supplied milk, most of which was turned into cheese. The pigs were fattened to supply the main course for major feasts. The sheep supplied wool, which was spun into cloth for the families clothes. The chickens supplied eggs and meat to liven up the diet of peas and porridge.

I tend to think of the peasant family as something the player would not control directly, but could maybe click on to get a “feel” for how their territory was being run.

Economics: Manors

This is where you get into SimCity territory . . . the terrain is broken up into, say, square kilometers, around a central village. So many peasant families per square . . . paying taxes, to the Knight . . . but the size of the territory is constrained . . . you could set it widely, but basically “productivity” will fall off with distance from center? (Peasants spend so much time walking to the field, or walking into town . . .?)

Availability of fresh or not-so-fresh water?

Stores or economic resources.

Artisans (millers, for example)

Merchants . . . economic resources from peasant families go to the local market . . . I’d love if the price could fluctuate some based on supply / demand (or player could SET prices . . . :> ) Anyway, merchants grab this stuff and drag them off to other Manors . . .

There could be some relationship with the local priest / church:

The farmer also had to deal with the church and he usually had to pay a title (ten percent) of all produce to the cleric (abbot or bishop) who presided over the manor, plus the usual land rents. The tithing was generally not resented, because the church tended to maintain reserves of grain. In times of need, the faithful to called on the church for relief and, if it was available, it was generally forthcoming. The church preached charity and, in times of need, tended to practice what it preached.

This is sort of comparable to a Civilization “city” . . . it’s the base unit of territory that most players are going to concern themselves with, but I like the idea that you could break these up / divide / regroup these things to go with changing conditions (one strategic concern might be that you can only have so many Knights based on whatever contraints . . . )

Arrr, well, there’s some notes, for now, it is past bed time and I’m a married man.

But Google gives me plenty of stats, and I have calculated that I could earn my current salary through AdSense if I can boost my page views to 642 million per day.

I think ratchet would melt under the strain of 7,500 hits per second.

Adam suggested that I could try boosting my CTR (click-through-ratio) . . . it greatly depends on where you put the ads, you see. Google have done research and the AdSense site has a nice graphic showing where ads are most likely to be clicked. I don’t want to be intrusive, and I don’t really have an ambition to live off my blog. (Sometimes people take me way too seriously.) But, I do need to tweak navigation, yet again.

As an aside: different ads yield different revenue on clicks. Google doesn’t give me the details as to which ad yields what revenue, but I suspect the more technical articles are the most profitable.

One thing I eschew is CLUTTER. So, the present incarnation of the web site has a few crucial links at the top. Then there’s a “stumblin’ around” bar on the side. Single posts link to next and previous, and to “related posts” which I think is just fun, and potentially useful, for some topics.

Unfortunately, that side bar doesn’t render in IE 5.5, and in Firefox, on some posts with custom backgrounds, it is placed underneath the content box so you can not see it. Another trick is that if you do read all the way through, you may have to scroll back up top to navigate. Maybe I need to put the “stumblin’ around” at the bottom, which is where I used to have the next / last / related thing.

Or, maybe I can put it top, bottom, and the side. A lot of the clutter found on other blogs has been consigned to the Links page, so I don’t feel so bad if I “clutter” my site with navigation. I could also maybe learn enough PHP so that I can tailor things a bit based on the amount of content in a post. Long posts should have some navigation at the bottom, short posts its probably fine with something up top or on the side . . .

I was also thinking to conduct a “reader survey” . . . I don’t talk about myself so much on my web site any more, so much as I talk about things that interest me. I really am, at this point, writing for others more than myself, I think. Well, I dig the practice. I enjoy writing. But . . . what to write about?

Anyway, some thinking out loud. Feel free to write me or post feedback here. I always love to hear from folks.

I probably should learn some PHP. Writing WordPress plugins would certainly drive traffic, from bloggers, and they like to link around . . .

Thanks,
-danny

<dman> WEBINAR
<dman> I hate that word.
<Ark> yes, i also loathe it
<recursive> oh, god, that is a bad one

Dude, a Webinar is a Seminar conducted over a speakerphone, and you look at the slides in a web browser. Webinar just makes it sound even sadder than it already is.

Also, you people have to stop abusing the word “literally.” “Like, I mean, I literally had to walk all the way through the mall!” Gosh, that is so much worse than all of the times when you had to figuratively walk all the way across the mall!

Also, while I’m on it, lay off of rather! “I was rather impressed . . .” C’mon, it is this useless vague connecting word that should only be used by stuffy-headed English folk. “I was rather impressed by the eloquence with which Lord John Marbury delivered his speech to the commons.” Sure. But you’re not going to be rather impressed with how FreeBSD works on your laptop. Nosiree. You either somewhat like it or you don’t. Or something, I mean . . .

Alright, just lay off the webinars. And literally, I mean, take a walk. Give that word a rest. I’ll forgive your rather rather use of the word rather, but I’d just as soon, or rather you didn’t . . .

I work in the Bishop Ranch Office Megaplex. It is an enchanted dominion of beige and white office buildings, stretching two miles through the heart of San Ramon, CA. Our own building has a variation on a theme of steel and glass and fountains with abstract steel sculpture. We have a suite on one of the five stories, my private office has a view of Mount Diablo, and any time I pace the walkways around the open inner court I can spy somewhere the lady assigned to keep our spotless shiny building clean, dusting a steel handrail or some other task critical to structural shinyness.

It is like something out of Star Trek. We even have aliens: smaller, browner Indians from somewhere deep inside Mexico, who are always outdoors, somewhere around the complex, planting flowers, fixing the fountains, replacing shrubbery with other shrubbery. I’m told that every few months the plants in the lobby are replaced with other plants. Some plants are plastic, some plants are organic. All the plants share a common destiny: they will only stay a while in our lobby, before moving on, probably to another lobby.

When I started here in November they had opened a new cafe in our local complex, which was replacing the cafe that had been there previously. This cafe is called the Lost Ladle, and I have bought many morning pastries and lunch time sandwiches there. Good quality, good value, and some friendly faces. I’m told that it was better than the cafe that was there before.

This morning my pastry was half price. Today is their last day. In a couple of weeks, a new cafe, the Cactus Cafe, will open in its place. Rotated out of the complex, some Alliterative Alternative, to keep my own race of pasty-faced desk jockeys from becoming too complacent or bored with our office environment. Or something like that. I suspect the space is contracted out and whomever is there is often underbid. Anyway, for better or for worse, it shakes up my view of my little planet.

And I got the weekend ahead of me.

And, a friend calls, totally bummed out about work. I share my philosophy about how you can work your 9-5, and then forget about whatever you don’t like about work, and go home, and revel in the beauty, or the problems, I guess, of your home life.

Enough upbeat energy and positive thoughts and my friend seemed a lot more cheerful.

Which makes me happy too.

Today is Tuesday.
Today is Tuesday.
Tuesday spaghetti!
Monday string beans!
Everybody’s Happy!
Well I should say: HEY!!

So, what just happened was that I took a look out for cars while crossing the right-hand turnout to the main crossing. An older lady in a red sports car came whizzing up to the turnout, took a look at me, and kept going. As I stepped in to the turnout, I smacked her red spoiler and continued on my way. I heard a honking behind me, as a few pedestrians already waiting at the main crossing looked around. After a moment, I turned my head too, to see the red sports car drifting lonely down the street.

I figure that if you fail to yield to a pedestrian, then the wholesome smack of flesh on plastic is a healthy reminder that plastic smacking flesh is highly undesirable. A healthy way of saying, “Good morning, and thank you for flirting with vehicular manslaughter.”

5:02PM, Bishop Ranch Bus Stop

I got downstairs late for the 4:54 bus. A co-rider suggested that we missed it. Then the bus pulled up, and we got on board. I did some reading up on web performance tuning, trying to think of more ways to debug the causes of trouble for one of our European clients. The bus roared along, and my studying was cut short, because by 5:20, the bus was already at Walnut Creek! It took another three minutes before the traffic light allowed the bus to cross Ygnacio Valley Road and drop us off at the BART station. As we waited, I noticed, out the window next to me, a guy in a blue Volkswagen shuffling papers in his lap, twitching with his transmission, and chatting on the cell phone, pulling a foot or two forward every few seconds, waiting eagerly for the light.

I figure that if you want to get work done on the ride home, you can take the bus. It works for me. “Can you believe that guy,” I said to the passenger in front of me. “And I have to walk home through that!”

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung,
Would you hear my voice come thru the music,
Would you hold it near as it were your own?

It’s a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken,
Perhaps they’re better left unsung.
I don’t know, don’t really care
Let there be songs to fill the air.

Translation?

While we all wish that creative expression could transmit our thoughts and emotions from artist to audience, that doesn’t matter so much. If you enjoy creating, or you appreciate what is created, than that is good enough.

Others have analysed this song a lot more.

This is how I used to think, back around the first time Bush had become president. And I think that if these things are to happen then I am in a better position to engage them . . . a little more patience, a lot more experience, and with Yayoi, I hope, more inclined toward stability. Here’s to the next round!

The URLs for this are:

http://dannyman.toldme.com/category/general/

And, if you are in to RSS feeds:

http://dannyman.toldme.com/category/general/rss2/

Love,
-danny

I got a good deal on Southwest Airlines for a one-way flight. Unfortunately, Southwest doesn’t fly to San Francisco, so I booked for San Jose. When I got to the airport, I tried the automated check-in thingy: credit card … okay … flight number? Gee, well, I have that … okay … confirmation code?

Look, silly computer, if you know my name and my flight number, what need have you of a string of random digits?

Fortunately, the human-operated line was nearly nil. I told the lady I was going to San Francisco. “You mean Oakland?” “Oh yeah, San Jose . . . you guys fly to Oakland?” Given that I no longer live in Silicon Valley, and that Oakland has a mediocre shuttle bus connection to BART, this is now slightly less asstastic for me than San Jose, which has a free shuttle bus to Caltrain, which can sometimes get you to BART, on the rare hours that it is running, or the VTA, which can very slowly transport you to a mile hike to the Fremont BART. Well, I could catch a cab to the Fremont BART. What, fifteen miles? Figure $20? $30? Well, I saved $70 by not flying through SFO, so it works out . . .

I went to the ID check to get to the terminal. The lady told me to get in the left lane. She motioned to the far left lane, where people were exiting the terminal. Since this was clearly not a security line, I got in the left-most security line, and very quickly and efficiently got myself scanned. I’m very good at this. And I was waiting for some time at the head of boarding group B to grab a nice seat on the plane.

When it was time to board the plane, I stuck my ticket under the scanner, and the guy said that wasn’t it, did I have the extra paperwork they gave me at Security? Eh? I pulled out the ticket sleeve with my baggage tag. No, you see, I had been selected for extra screening . . . they should have done that at the security check point . . . we helped delay the flight another half hour which was how long before the the TSA managed to finally send a jovial fat man and his sidekick down to the gate to wand me down and paw through my bag while everyone else waited on the plane. To be fair, we had to wait for a flight attendant to show, and there was a couple that bailed at the very last minute when they realized they had left their keys in the rental car. At long last I found my way to the very rear rear of the full plane. But at our touchdown in Vegas I got to move forward and secure a vast expanse of leg room in an exit row.

An announcement came over the PA. “If you look out to the right,” we all turned to gaze at The Strip, “you can wave goodbye to your paycheck.”

Now, back to the question of getting home from the airport. Caltrain doesn’t run past, oh, 6PM on Sundays. BART runs until just past midnight, but there’s no BART in San Jose. And the VTA . . . well, we got in about 11PM, so I wasn’t going to wait for the slow-ass light rail plus bus connection plus possible hiking in to Fremont to catch the BART. I grabbed a cab.

The cabs in San Jose are $.25 per 1/10 of a mile. Or, $2.50 per mile, or $25.00 for ten miles, or, with enough twists and turns to get out of the airport, and the BART being some miles off the highway still, a modest $50.25! I paid the nice cab driver a handsome fare, and figured that if nothing else this made his holiday a bit merrier. I grinned at the thought of paying perhaps $100 if the BART weren’t running and he had to go to Walnut Creek. Yuck!

I could have rented a car for less than $40, but then I would have had to return it.

BART was, of course, awesome. The train waited to pull away at Fremont, and then a timed transfer to the Baypointe in Oakland, and all for somewhere around $5.

Next time I fly Oakland, and if for some reason I’m doing San Jose, it better be during the day when I can grab Caltrain, or else I will bribe a South Bay friend with dinner if I have to.

I got home late, to find Newsweek rambling about “Seeing Purple” as if Barack Obama would be our next Preident. At the apartment door was an obstruction — a silvery balloon that said “It’s a Girl” hanging above a bouquet. Did I have the wrong apartment? No, this is me. And the bouquet was addressed to the same number, but the name of a probably former tenant. The key let me in to the same bleak lodgings I had left last Wednesday. Apparently, somebody had a baby, and received flowers about it last Wednesday from some management company. There was no contact information to report the error, and it has been a week and I’m sure the new Mom has bigger concerns than some misaddressed bouquet, so I graciously gave the flowers refuge.

This morning, it was raining outside. Serious, runny rainy, not the winter drizzle that is all over Walnut Creek many other winter mornings. I had something of a cold, and did not want to walk around in the rain, with a sore shoulder-back thing . . . but I steeled myself, and slept in a bit . . . I got up and brushed my teeth and felt none-too-good, called in sick, and slept until noon. I still have some sneezes and a little bit of neck pain, but the extra day has done me good.

This afternoon, I took a long lunch at the coffee shop, a sandwich and orange juice, chased later by a mocha. I checked in with work via IRC. (Yes, yes, we are a geek company.) I wandered off to Safeway and bought a whole bunch of Orange Juice on sale, along with walnuts, apples, and bananas. Then over to Target, where I picked up a floor lamp with enough illuminative power so that the home office, while it is now dark out, is a sufficiently well-lit place to sit and do computer stuff. Bleakness reduced. And I have been tidying up, now that there is enough light to reveal the need for tidying.

Tonight I went to Patong again. It’s the largest beach and shopping area and where the largest group of tourists are. It’s about a mile long and four blocks deep and full of big stores and small shops. Big hotels. The Sheraton and everything — and I mean everything — is destroyed.

The author is visiting ex-pats in the local hospitals. Thailand’s public health system is not the greatest, and being in a foreign country in bad times just adds to the stress. And there is plenty of tragedy to go around:

The first room we went in was a young Swedish man with a major cut all the way down his leg. His Thai wife was sitting next to him with a large bandage on her chin. We asked him how he was doing, and he said that this was nothing because they had lost their 3-month-old daughter. Just washed away. The woman just started crying uncontrollably. It was heart wrenching. We gave them a hug, and they were very appreciative that we came by.

Read the article. Thailand, America, wherever, we are all so many peas in the same pod.

We got shocked on September 11 because a handful of crazies managed to fell two skyscrapers, kill nearly 4,000 people, and shut down air traffic across the United States for several days, and make us all paranoid and confused, but humanity deals with crazier natural catastrophes all the time. Just a year ago, it was several thousand dead in Iran. The United States has reportedly lost hundreds of citizens who happened to spend Christmas on the shores on the Indian ocean, and the locals, who are poor and don’t have the public services that we have, are faring worse still. Tens of thousands missing . . .

We waste our time with bluster about our War on Terrorism, when more of us are killed each year in car accidents and by smoking. The real ennobling effort is doing what we can to take care of all of us. Earthquake in Iran, Epidemic and Genocide in Africa, Tsunami is Asia . . . 9/11 was a taste of “normal” for America . . . a reminder that we, too, are subject to the same flavors of fate as everyone else in the world. There is plenty of sadness and tragedy for us all.