LONG blog ahead about various different things, so I’m actually gonna organize this instead of it being one massive wall of text.

Rant/Discussion

I have an informational speech due sometime in the next two weeks or so, and I’ve chosen to do it on Google Fiber. So I’m just gonna jot down a few of the main points I plan on making during this speech.

Google Fiber, for those of you whom for some reason haven’t heard, is a project currently being tested and further developed in Kansas City, KA/MO. The idea behind this project is to further the admittedly stagnant technology of networking, specifically the speed at which data can be transferred. Google Fiber aims to pioneer the way to faster internet speeds. Now, let us examine what’s going on here.

The basic premise here is that Google has unlocked the power of the gigabit. Or rather, they’ve created a line that can transmit at 1Gbps (GigaBits Per Second). Their claim is that they’ve attained speeds 100 times faster than the average internet user’s current speed. This average comes out to roughly 10Mbps (MegaBits Per Second), which is a fair average considering a large percentage of internet users are on a cable line which typically range from 10Mbps to I believe around 16Mbps. I personally have a DSL connection and get roughly 3Mbps. Now, to establish a point of reference, the bit is the smallest representation of data there is. It can either be 1 or 0 (one can also view this as on or off depending on your background and expertise). A megabit is 10^6 bits while a gigabit is 10^9 bits. Converting these numbers to the more commonly understood byte unit, we find that a megabit is roughly equal to 125KB (kilobytes). So if you have a 10Mbps download speed from your ISP, then you can theoretically download 1.25MB (megabytes) per second. This means that the time it takes to download 1GB (Gigabyte) of information is roughly 13 minutes and 23 seconds.

Now that we have some information we can think about, what does it change to have a gigabit download speed? Well, your download speed is now 125MBps. That’s more than a slight increase. It also shaves your download time for 1GB of information down to a mere 8 seconds. This is a MASSIVE improvement.

After spending all that time explaining what google fiber does, I’m not going to bash it. Rather, I’m going to bash the idiots who make ridiculous statements like, “I wanna move to Kansas so I can have Google Fiber!â€?

Really? You’re going to move to Kansas so that you can have the potential to download at 1Gbps only to download at a fraction of that due to everyone else in the world becoming the bottleneck? There’s this little fundamental concept involved with networking where you can only move as fast as the slowest link between you and your destination. It’s called a bottleneck. What this comes down to is Google Fiber is completely negligible until it spreads across the rest of the country (and possibly the world). Sure, gamers in Kansas will be able to have impossibly fast, LAN-like-WAN, but that’s about where the usefulness ends. It has little to no relevance to businesses because if you’re transferring a lot of data, or engaging in a lot of video conferencing, it’s probably going to be somewhere you can’t just drive to. In effect, what this does is ensure that you have the fastest connection possible, but that doesn’t mean that you’re going to have a gigabit.

Before anyone calls me out on my use of erroneous terminology, I realize that the transmission rate really has nothing to do with speed, but rather the size of the data that you can push. What’s the difference between 1Mbps and 1GBps? You can push a LOT more data at once through the 1GBps than the 1Mbps.

It’s also fair to note that this technology does absolutely nothing for other network delay (at least to my knowledge, unless they’ve also improved on the physical speed of the transmission over the line) such as queueing and propagation delay.

All in all, the Fiber project looks to be a large step in the right direction for the advancement of networking technology in our day to day lives. People just need to realize that, at least for right now, it’s just an experiment, and has very little usefulness in its current state.

Gaming

So I’ve been gaming quite a bit recently. Given that I’m currently between jobs and school is less than challenging at the moment, I’ve had a lot of time for it :p

I’ve mostly been playing League of Legends (which I’ve been playing for 2-ish years now?) which has, through some work of magic, become my most played game by far for the past year or so. I’d honestly be afraid to look at the amount of hours I’ve spent playing it. For those of you who are familiar with the game, I mostly like to play at mid or top (yes, I have trust issues) with mages being my favorite champion type. I’ve actually been playing Jayce a LOT in top lane, and have some form of success every game with him. I’m a terrible AD carry, so the only time I’m ever in bot lane is as a support. If anyone plays and wants to add me, my Summoner name is TehDot.

I’ve also recently discovered the Half-Life 2 mod, The Hidden. I can’t begin to describe to you the emotions this game brings out of me. To name a few: bloodlust, terror, guilt, shock, anxiety, etc.

In this mod, one player plays as the hidden, while everyone else is an IRIS agent. The agents are loaded out with the guns of their choosing, as well as an additional piece of kit which don’t add an awful lot to the game, but are helpful nonetheless. The hidden, however, only has a knife. It’s basically an 8vs1 team deathmatch style game (with only one life). The kicker here is that the hidden has superhuman speed and strength (jumps high and clings to walls), can see movement through walls, and is almost entirely invisible. You would be shocked at how terrifying it is to find yourself alone, out in the open in this game, as it almost certainly singles you out as a primary target while you have a 360 degree field of vision you have to attempt to monitor constantly for the slightest distortion in the air.

Needless to say, this game packs HEAPS of enjoyment in a relatively simple, quick gaming experience.

Development

I have a couple ideas for some games I plan on working on over the next several months. I’m gonna give a very basic overview of these ideas, but I’m gonna keep most of the details to myself for now.

Puzzle Platformer

Yes, so original. However, the “interestingâ€? thing here is I don’t want the player solving typical platformer puzzles. I want to create an actual merger of a platformer with a true puzzle game in the idea of color matching and bubbles and whatnot. A better term to describe it would probably be an action puzzler, but that’s all I’ll say about that.

Side Scrolling Beatemup

Not much to say about this one. Main premise is to make the player feel god-mode powerful and decimate hoards of enemies. Fun times, right? Fun fact about this one, my little brother is probably gonna do all the pixeling for this game. He’s 14 and has already far surpassed any spriting skills I once possessed.

School

Is really fucking easy. Honestly, I feel like the god of mathematics in my calc 2 class, and I’m the only one that has any idea what’s going on in my Operating Systems class.

So this thing is three pages long in Word. I think now would probably be a good time to stop…

I’m not gonna proofread this, so hopefully it isn’t completely impossible to follow.

Question of the day:

What’s your language/engine/method of choice for game development?