StarCraft: The Craft of War

My dad once taught me to play Chess. It's a genius game that teaches you, well, the craft of war. It involves strategy. Each piece has its own properties, and they're allowed to do different things on the map. You have to carefully plan your moves, and attack sneakily so you don't lose your king and queen right away. 

If there is a modern computer game that is analogous to Chess, I believe it is StarCraft (the original). It was published in 1998 and is still available to play via Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net application for a very low price. In fact, it's still well-supported, and many people play the game online today.  

Image from StarCraft by Blizzard Entertainment

The basic premise of the game is, well, war. You have three races (teams) in space who, for whatever reason, cannot resort to diplomacy and must do battle! They are the Terrans (humans), Zerg and Protoss. Each race has it's own unique qualities. The Zerg are terrifying bug-like creatures who can re-produce at a rapid rate, but they're an intelligent species that can attack with speed and efficiency. The Protoss, are extremely intelligent humanoid creatures that take a while to get going but create the best technology for sneak attacks. The Terrans are about a middle ground in that equation, balanced in strategy and technology. Being good at the game requires you to master all three races, and their techniques. 

The game is so difficult! I've barely beaten the computer once. And, when I play Online I get crushed even quicker by real people. Koreans are really good at this game, by the way!, so shoutout to the wonderful country of Korea. But even though I get crushed, people are generally polite. Basically, the only messages I get are something like: "Sorry, guys... have to go home now." 

A battle between Zerg and Terran flying stuff

The main technique is, first-and-foremost, speed; you have to be extraordinarily quick on the keyboard and the best players have all kinds of hotkeys (saved little codes) on their keyboard to make things happen way faster than pointing and clicking with the mouse. The second is creating FLYING THINGS, anything that can fly: planes, spaceships, horrible dragons, etc. Once you have the flying stuff you can raid your enemies quickly without giving them a hope of survival; "death from above," they say. 

The thing about getting the flying things is that you need to invest time, resources and research into having them. And, they cost A LOT. But sending in the flying stuff is a heck of a lot better than having all your great young Marines massacred by a swarm of angry Zerg.        

When I play against the computer I like to pretend I'm Dwight D. Eisenhower planning the great D-Day invasion of 1944: hundreds of ships, hundreds of planes, guys jumping out of ships, guys jumping out of planes, etc. That's kind of fun. But Online (and in real life, twenty-first century warfare), that strategy doesn't work so well. You always just get sucker-punched by a guy on another continent that's smarter and faster than you are. But, it's just a game, and we can have a good laugh afterward!

Mike Ybarra, Allen Adham et all. StarCraft. Blizzard Entertaining. 1998.  

Flight Tracking: I Guess I'm a Plane-Guy now...

Do you remember when older guys used to be really, really into trains? Like, buying little trains to put in their house and standing by the tracks waiting for a train to go by? There was even a movie called Trainspotting (unfortunately, that movie wasn't about trains at all!). Anyway, I think I'm becoming a plane guy, a guy who likes planes. 

Did you know you can see pretty much every airplane, or helicopter, above you and identify where it's going and where it came from for FREE? I recently saw a private jet take off from Chicago Executive Airport (PWK) and fly to Switzerland (ZRH), and it made me think... Unless Taylor Swift is on that plane, someone is either up to no good, or they're paying WAY too much for the ride. Hopefully they just have a good friend that's a pilot, I really don't know.

My obsession began when I bought a little radio that can pick up a lot of things: planes, towers, police calls, everything that could ever go wrong with the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) -those men and women are the real MVP's, btw. Anyway, you can hear A LOT with a radio like mine, and I'm pretty sure listening to it is not (always) legal, so I'm in the process of getting my HAM radio operator's license, just to make sure I'm not stepping on anyone's toes, or tuning into something I shouldn't be hearing. 

So, either way, I like tracking planes and seeing where they're going. What are they doing up there? What are they transporting? Is Southwest ripping me off? And if you're not already aware, there are SO many planes up there. 

The Tydbit! Showing a Dubai flight coming into Chicago.

Before I end this post I'd like to make a shout out to flightradar24.com. They're the wonderful proprietors of  the app that makes this all possible. In fact I used their API Key to get the nearest flight on my little screen at home, it's called the Tydbit. But, be careful when using API Keys, because if you use them too much, the company may want to charge you a little bit of money for their service. Otherwise you get SHUT DOWN.

Anyway, have fun flight tracking! And, check out our new "What's Up There?" widget to the right. Just pull, pinch, or click to get the map right in the best spot, and you will know exactly what's up there.    

Subnautica: Have You Ever Been Afraid of Going into the Deep-end of the Pool?

I wouldn't call my self much of a "gamer." I'm actually pretty terrible at video games. Everyone else is just too good. It took me roughly two hours of playing for five straight nights before I actually got one single kill online in Call of Duty II: Modern Warfare. Most of the time I was just being blown away, and/or stabbed... 

Lake Michigan

But I recently got a small reasonably-priced Nintendo Switch. And, I was SO happy to find that Subnautica, the classic PC game is now available on this little device. The only reason I tried it out was because it got such great reviews in the gaming community, and was said to be terrifying, like, nightmarish and frightening. (Who's up for a good thriller or horror movie, am I right?) 

Anyway, the game starts with you crash-landing, alone, on an alien world -but, get this, it's a world that is almost all oceans. Therefore, survival depends not on walking around land and picking up vegetables and bugs to eat, you have to SWIM into the DEEP. As you may imagine, there are lots of scary things down there, not the least of which is running out of air and drowning before you have time to get to the the surface. 

Believe me, there are tons of huge, horrible, creatures down there that can swallow you whole -but there's nothing more terrifying than swimming down into a reef or a cave from which you may not have enough oxygen to emerge from safely. 

The key aspect of this game that I enjoyed was that it forces you to go down rather than up. We talk so much about space and air travel, but no one mentions the secrets of the depths of the oceans. As a kid, I learned how to swim but I was desperately afraid of the deep-end of the pool. For some reason, when I went down there I panicked. Thankfully, my dad was there to fish me out! But, there are secrets down there if you look.

Photo of the Subnautica Game

Subnautica is a wonderful and beautifully crafted game. The game, published by Unknown Worlds Entertainment and created by Charlie Cleveland and countless others, is a masterpiece. Playing it is like reading a sci-fi novel on-par with Dune or The The Expanse, by "James S.A Corey". Believe me, if your kid is playing Subnautica, they're probably smarter than you are ;)

Subnautica: A video game by Charlie Cleveland, Hugh Jeremy et al. was published by Unknown Worlds Entertainment in 2018.

3D Printing: How to make anything

I've recently gotten into 3D printing, one of the newest fads. I'm not sure if it will catch on, or not. But I suspect it's here to stay. The process is pretty simple, you buy a box-type structure, or machine, with a fairly simple interface, and then it starts building things (literally anything you want). 

The way the machine works is by melting a spool of "filament", a.k.a. plastic and laying it out on a heated pad per specific guidelines you program into it. Those guidelines could be for a laundry machine part (so you don't have to buy it yourself), or a mini Romulan Warbird from the old Star Trek series. Recently, I built a little model of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul -just because I like it, and because I've never had the ability to see it in real-life. 

3D Printed Hagia Sophia

The process is not new. It's been around, and used to be called "additive manufacturing"; meaning that we're not taking a big chunk of material and sculpting it or molding it (leaving a lot of it to waist), we're only using exactly the amount of material needed to make the perfect object with nothing left-over -really cool idea! 

The specific printer I bought was a Creality brand printer. It cost fewer than $300 USD. It's an older model and has some minor issues, but generally it's f%#king great once you get used to it. I wouldn't recommend paying SO much if you're a first-time user. And, I'll stick with my current machine as long as it lasts. However, If I were to buy a new one in the future, I'd likely get THIS ONE. It's available on Amazon for (at this time) for roughly $600 USD. 

There are many pitfalls in 3D printing, all of which I won't get into -you often end up with a horrific cluster of molten plastic that looks like The Thing instead of what you wanted to make. But the basic rules are to make sure to level your build-plate, ensuring that it is perfectly, 100 percent upright before printing. AND, to ensure the temperature of both the build-plate and nozzle are set to the correct temperature for the type of material you're using: PLA (Polylactic acid), ABS (Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene and Polylactic acid). 

Also, don't eat or drink from stuff made from PLA for some reason. Use a regular plate; I'd recommend buying it from TARGET!   

Hobbies: Coding with Arduino IDE

So, I graduated with a humanities degree. But I suppose it wasn't a total loss, because shortly after my short-lived teaching career, I was hired by a big-boy tech company to do support for their SAAS products. I didn't need to know code, I didn't need an engineering degree, and I didn't need to know (exactly) how our computers worked. But the job introduced me to XML and SLQ language. And I started, emphasis on started, to learn a bit how those languages worked. Now, this wasn't me being cool, and hacking behind a dark-screened computer like I was in some Jerry Bruckheimer & Don Simpson movie. It was more like copying and pasting strips of code into my browser -super boring stuff, actually. 

An LED system with a photoresistor sensor. 

Since then, I've been obsessed by computers, and how they work. I really want to get into the "guts" of those things and figure out how they actually work. So, in a way, I was an Arduino natural before I even knew it!  I stepped into the void and purchased the "30 Days Lost in Space" (3) electronics set with a "Hero" board, technical equipment and 30 lessons accessible via a website. This is something a middle school child could do. The lessons are meant for learners, and start at the very basic level. But, importantly, the Hero board uses Arduino IDE as it's language.  

In addition to the programming language, I've also got to order and work with the hardware; resistors, pin-headers, LCD screens, engines, fans, motors etc. Arduino programming really closes the gap between software and hardware, between the coding and the fantastic machines. And, you'd sh*t yourself when you see just how inexpensive this stuff is. The Arduino board retails for about 30 to 40 bucks (USD) (4), and other similar boards are even less expensive! This is stuff that would have been restricted to a lab or a company office only 20 to 30 years ago. Now it's available to all of us!

A rudimentary range-finder.

Arduino IDE introduced me to coding again, like a novice. In short, I was a kid. What do I need to type to make that red light turn blue?, can I make a stop watch?, etc. Not only that, but Arduino has its own board that you can make just about anything with. Need a robot friend? Wanna Spy on your Neighbors? Send a Satellite into space? The Arduino can do it all. It's the brain that makes your hardware wake up. Then, It's ALIVE!

Right now, I'm just working on simple projects more-or-less to learn. Nothing too exciting, but I can't help but think how great the Arduino board and Arduino IDE would be for children. It's an exceptional educational technology that is perfect for training our youth for the 21st century future. It integrates the machines, we all take for granted, with the programming that makes those machines think.

The Cubical Ruins Go Live!

Hello! And welcome to The Cubical Ruins, a blog site. If you're reading this, you're probably a friend or acquaintance of Steve, the proprietor of this domain, but if not welcome anyway. I hope you enjoy reading and browsing. 

The immediate goal of this website is to practice writing and web-development skills, and present the work to an actual audience. The broader, societal, goal is to break free of of Instagram, Facebook, Twittter and the other tech giants, and publish literature, ideas, criticism, hobbyist info and general goings-on, on an independent platform. In short, The Cubical Ruins seeks to resurrect the Blogoshpere of the late 1990's and early 00's, when the Internet was still a fragmented universe of unique weirdos doing their own thing and hosting their own pages. Perhaps social media and Web 2.0 colonized the entire World Wide Web and pushed all of those crudely designed websites out of existence. Or, maybe, those weirdos just got jobs and families. Either way, The Cubical Ruins has decided to join the party late.      

Enjoy The Cubical Ruins: a literary work, hobby blog and photo collection written and created by Stephen M. Skok. 

Contact The Ruins at steve@cubicalruins.com