My 10 year-old learning Rage of Bahamut

One of hottest free games in the mobile space right now is called Rage of Bahamut. Unlike its name and graphics suggest, this is a card collecting and card battling game. There is no visible violence, blood, gore, or for that matter character animation. Based on that description, it is somewhat surprising that it has turned into such a phenomenon. But the success of it is not what I want to talk about. Instead I have learned a great deal from teaching my 10 year-old daughter to play it. My daughter is not an avid learner. The process of learning does not excite her. And so far I have yet to discover something that she desperately wanted to master. It has been quite difficult to find the opportunity to teach her how to learn.

I started the game a couple of months ago. She watched me played a few times and wanted to participate. The first thing she wanted to do was to help me poked the screen during questing. It was mechanical and un-rewarding mentally to say the least but it was a good bait. I also showed her the process of evolving (merging) cards and let her help me with it. With my old iPhone (no SIM card, just WiFi connection) in hand, she asked if she can have it installed on “her” iPhone. She took the bait!

One of the first thing I had to encourage her to do is to READ the screen. Every word, every sentence is there for a reason. Being a lazy learner, this was something she has to overcome. I have come to terms that nothing will encourage her more than a subject matter she’s interested in. Of course, the opposite is true. I had to hold myself back and let her read, comprehend, and understand at her own pace. I just had to make sure she actually read the pages rather than just clicking through the tutorial.

Since she had been watching me play, the easiest thing for her to master was questing. She accessed the function, poked poked poked, very self-evident, involving, and rewarding. With more cards, the next thing she mastered was evolving. She also learned how to improve the attributes, how to obtain friendship points on a periodic basis, among other things. In addition, she had learned some of the terminologies: “feeder cards”, “fully-evolved cards”, etc. With a proverbial bag of cards begging to be used and the questing/evolving starting to lose appeal (I’ve come to recognize these warning signs on whatever subject she got in and out of), she asked what to do next. BAIT!

With the basic mechanics mastered, now comes areas that are more cerebral. I introduced her to the rarity concept and how she can work on building her attack and defense cards. With a few premium card pack tickets, she got a hold of some rare cards and started to get excited. With the concept of evolving under her belt, I explained to her enhancing, leveling, and various more complex concepts that involved a great deal of math. The actual mathematics is actually not important but her grasping of the concepts were. (For those of you that knows the game, I explained to her the difference between 8-15, 6-11, 4-0, and potential outcomes.) Even though the gratification is not as instant, she started to understand.

I recommended her to focus on doing 6-11 on one card and she decided on a Holy Knight. Which card she chose really wasn’t that important. The fact that she had one and that she made the choice herself were. As she applied her feeders enhancing this card, her eyes lit up watching the card’s stats improving. Instant gratification at work! Somewhere along the line, the fact that she needs 6 of the same cards to-be-drawn randomly seemed to create an angst. BAIT! I then introduced her to trading. Using other cards she was not interested in, she was able to find trades from the marketplace and was able to get her hands on 3 Holy Knights, free! Knowing that nothing (except time) can stop her from achieving half of the 6-11 caused her to regain her excitement.

During our drive to meet a friend yesterday, she started to ask questions and I answered them. I’ve now observed her listening, comprehending, practicing, and asking questions. I sweetened the pot a bit more by telling her that 1) she and I now speaks a language that mommy doesn’t understand, and 2) if she listen in on my conversations with my gaming friends, she would start to understand what we are talking about. Evidently, access to exclusivity has a certain appeal also.

Today, she came into my cave and announced that she’s going to check the market and see if she can find a trade. After 5 minutes, she jumped into my view and cheered that she was successful and now have 4 Holy Knight cards. Again, apparent progress excited her. I told her, “I’m very proud of you of learning.” She replied with a puzzled look, “You are proud of me for learning a video game?!” Her mom (within earshot) promptly cracked up. And I said, “No, I’m proud of you for learning, period.” She was obviously amused.

While playing together is rewarding in a certain way, I think I’ve gained more by observing her learning behavior. People often complain about certain activities are addicting, including gaming. What I found is that other activities like studying, school, etc. are not addicting because they don’t have the correct mechanisms in place. They are not appealing to a child’s (or even an adult’s) learning cycle:

Interest spawns focus, focus spawns learning opportunity, learning opportunity spawns chance for accomplishment, fast turn around in accomplishment (a.k.a. instant gratification, no, it is not always a bad thing) spawns reinforcement, reinforcement caused mastery, mastery leads to boredom (a cliff), complexity steers people away from the cliff and create additional interests. And the cycle repeats. I hear from time to time that parents are amazed how quickly their children can master complex gaming concepts and complex gaming mechanics. My take is that children actually have very high capacity for learning but if the mechanisms are not in place or if the complexity isn’t there, they lose interests quickly.

Looking at how complicated this game actually is, I think I can squeeze a few more weeks of teaching/learning out of it.

From Education To Teaching To Technolgy To Learning

I just returned from volunteering from http://blogs.ksbe.edu/edtechconference2012/. Last time this conference was held was back in . I am not an educator myself. But as one who work for an educational institution and as a parent of a child who participated in one daily, I did not expect education as a system to have changed much. I was right and I was wrong.

Back in 2008… actually, let’s recap what the world was like in 2008. The world-wide economic crisis just started to rear its ugly head. Kosovo declares independence from Serbia. 69,000 people were killed after an earthquake in China. China hosted the Olympics. Somalia pirates hijack multiple ships. SpaceX Falcon 1 successfully conducterd the first private space flight. The Large Hadron Collider is officially inaugurated. Obama was elected as the U.S. President. Back in 2008, our education system was as it was 100 years ago. Educators have just started to look at the Web 2.0 world. 4 years later in 2012, many world, economics, and technology events had happened. To put it in perspective, Apple’s iPad came into existence for the masses about 2 years ago (in April 2010). Our education system is as it was 104 years ago. I was right, not much has changed.

But as I listen to speaker after speaker, discussing and talking about how the world has changed, I’m forced to acknowledged that things are indeed different than 4 years ago. It is actually more accurate to say that I’m forced to acknowledged that what were once novelty ideas have started to take hold among the educators. So I was wrong as well.

Instead of concerning about Facebook, texting, web 2.0, iPhone, and a hundred other technological inventions, many educators have adopted them and incorporated them into their world. But more importantly, many have see passed the technologies themselves and re-focused on the ultimate purpose: Learning. Note that I did not say “teaching”. As I converse with the teachers and the speakers in the conference, there is a distinct acknowledgement, as least among them, that teachers are no longer information authority whose purpose was to pass on factual knowledge to the next generation. Instead, they all realized that the likes of Google can provide more accurate, more up-to-date facts than they can faster. Their roles have changed from teachers of facts to teachers of learning. Many schools, cirriculums, teaching methods, experiments (or not) has been teaching our children how to learn. The results are often startling and encouraging. Students benefiting from these changes participated at a higher level, they are more motivated, and produced better work. The teachers merely provide guidance and facilitation.

Unfortunately, what hasn’t change is the education system. Most students are still measured by whether they have acquired pieces of facts and whether they can answer questions based on memroizing those facts. Our system is still not measuring whether our children are capable of learning on their own, whether they can collaborate, whether they can research and judge what they found, and whether they help each other grow. At the same time, the same system continue to measure our teachers on whether they have successfully taught facts to their students instead of measuring whether they have “taught” our children the necessary skills to become life-long learners.

As much as I am discouraged by the state of our education system, I have hope. If we can observe changes in individual teachers’ views and approaches in a few years, we may yet witness ground shattering changes to this system within our life time.

App Store “Invalid Address” woes and a thought

Recently Apple made some changes to the App Store purchase validation and caused a whole lot of grieves with iPhone/iPad users. The symptom is basically a message saying “Invalid Address” in the credit card validation process. As of this writing, there was no official response.

After a day or two with the issue myself, I’ve decided to do some research instead of waiting for Apple. Online searches result in similar inconclusive messes of forum postings. Like any other obscure problems in any other OSes, some people encountered the problem, some people didn’t, some claimed certain fix work for them, some claimed otherwise, some just whined and complained, some just proclaimed the end of the world.

After actually messing around with the addresses on file with my credit card company and the addresses on my phone without resolving the problem, I have concluded that the problem is not about matching the two addresses exactly. Logic dictates that the problem lies elsewhere. The next step is take a look at what possible things Apple can do to mess around with address matching. The first thing that came to mind is address standardization and cleansing. We’ve had some experience with it dealing with US Postal Service and the derivative service providers whose primary business is related to marketing (mass mailing to put it nicely).

There are two reasons why even badly written addresses (or sometimes incorrect addresses) can reach the intended recipients. One, USPS actually put a lot of effort in sanitizing what people write on the envelopes. The sanitized addresses are used in distributing the mail to the correct local center. Two, good local postal workers will recognize names and addresses and make the delivery to the right people, households, and businesses. Because the effort to sanitize addresses is significant, USPS provide incentives to mailers to pre-sanitize addresses before mailing (research CASS Certified address verification software and you’ll discover a different world). In addition, mass mailers have an incentive to develop highly accurate address list so that their services offering is superior than those of their competitors.

Using one of the free online services available (I used Experian’s), I noticed the resolved address is different from both my address on record with my credit card company and the address on my phone. I updated the one on my phone (but not the credit card company’s) and viola, problem solved. The end result: My address on record with credit card company is different from my phone’s but my phone’s address is the same as the USPS sanitized version of my credit card address.

While the entire problem is quite easy to resolve for techies, it would not be apparent to today’s normal users of technologies. Two things are working against us. First, more and more of the technologies and what happens behind the scenes are hidden from the users. The old days of everything editable and configurable is gone. Users are shielded from everything they are “not supposed” to change. Not only that, users are shielded from even knowing the existence of these settings and configurations. Today, companies like Apple even make changes without announcing what they’ve changed. As unacceptable as it was years ago, it is now the norm. Second, today’s average technology users are less technologically savvy just because of the law of average. When everything works, everyone functions at a higher level, sure. But when hiccups occur, everything stops and few people knows how to research and handle problems. Even basic diagnostic skills are no longer expected from users.

This is a dangerous trend where the knowledge gap between the users and the manufacturers are once again widened to the degree that the users become totally dependent on the manufacturers’ ability to produce good technologies. This is a reversal of the trend of the past 30 years. Throughout technology history, community (not individual companies) has been the fundamental force advancing usability and supportability. With the way things are working, especially with companies like Apple, we are looking at a probable meltdown.

Changing Education Paradigms by Ken Robinson (via TED)

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms.html

TED Talks: Diana Laufenberg: How to learn? From mistakes

Diana Laufenberg: How to learn? From mistakes

Trip to India – Day 14 – Last Day in India

I watched the local news daily in the past 2 weeks and have seen the good and the bad. From political unrest to different parties joining forces, from police brutality (like torturing prisoner) to crime busting CSI style, from various criminal acts to various good deeds performed by average folks, from cheating husbands to people adopting orphans out of the goodness of their hearts, so on so forth. Bengaluru is a city where all of these coexist. While some aspects of life is stable, some others is in turmoil. There is the beauty, the serene, and the good and there is the ugly, the chaotic, and the evil. But at the end of the day, it is just like any other cities in the world.

Sure there are difference in the standard of living, the religions, the politics, etc. But those are relative. What remains true is that the essence of a city is really about the people themselves.

I was having dinner one night at a restaurant. At the next table were a couple and their little boy, probably around 6. He stared at me for a good minute, evidently haven’t had much contact with non-Indian. I looked at him, waved and smiled. He kept staring. I start doing funny faces and he smiled. And his parents smiled too. That says one thing to me: We aren’t all that different. In fact, I bet I can do the same thing with any other kids anywhere else in the world and I would get the same result. We are all born the same people. All the other baggages like political views, religious beliefs, racial prejudices, values or the lack there of were added on top as we grew up.

What that also mean is that whatever is wrong with the world today, we are the ones that made it so. Instead of focusing on ourselves, our beliefs, our religions, our politics, we should focus on the children, all the children, of the whole world. Since our children are all born the same, if we don’t mess them up, all the differences will disappear. All we have to do is to start by focusing on making them smile.

In politics we always complain about our leaders not fixing the system. In life we complain about how powerless we are to change our predicament. If we stopped all the silliness and focus on one thing and one thing alone: make all our children smile. Everything will come into focus. We will stop messing around with things that aren’t important to our children and focus on what is.

So how do we change the world? We are the ones who need to change, not our leaders, not the politics, but us. If we change ourselves, we change the world for our children. They smile. Our mission is accomplished. At a philisophical level, it really doesn’t have to get more complicated than that.

Adventure in a Linksys WRT54G2 router

Over the years, I’ve used many different routers.  They were consumer grade, served their purpose, and eventually died.  That role was occurpied by 3 Linksys WRT54G in the last 7 years.  The symptom of their demises were always the same.  The lights are on but no one can get to the Internet.  We have to reboot it (pull the power, let it sit for a bit, plug it back in) to get it towork again.  Sometimes we have to do it once a month, as the frequence increased to once every day or so, it is time to replace it.

This time is no different.  But the world has moved on, even IEEE had finished rectifying 802.11n.  So I decided to see what’s out there.  And man, there were a lot.  Linksys, Belkin, Netgear, etc. all comes with different industrial labels with the 802.11 family, the n, the g, the b, and they all add their own proprietary twists with commerical sounding moniker: MAX this, SUPER that, Fi this, Wi that.  It was mind-boggling to me.  I can see why regular consumers are lost.

First thing to decide was the industry standard.  802.11b was old. 802.11g had been around for a while and were fairly reliable.  802.11n was merely about MIMO (multiple in multiple out).  Based on where we are and the fact that the we weren’t experiencing any horrible interferences from microwaves, neighborhood routers, etc.  I’ve decided that 802.11n was not worth my money.  Of course, us not having any devices that can use the n standard played a part in the decision.  Removing the n took the more expensive choices out. 

We ran CAT5 throughout the house before we moved in so each room has a drop.  And we have mobile devices that can use wifi connectivities.  The end tally was: 2 XBox 360s on wire, 2 desktops on wire, 2 notebooks on wireless, 1 docking station on wire, 1 netbook on wireless, a Samsung Blu-Ray player on wire, 3 NAS on wire, 2 iPhone/iPod Touch on wireless, and the occasional visitor machine or 2.

Based on all that. There were still 3-4 choices from each manufacturers.  Reviews were not glowey for any of them.  For every positive response, there is a negative one.  So it is simply the lesser of all evils.  I wasn’t too big on Belkin (bad taste from the iPhone car rig) so it was either Netgear and Linksys.  (BTW, Linksys is actually the consumer level brand of Cisco, in case some smarty pants are trying to edumacate you.)  Instead of choosing, I bought one from each: A Linksys WRT54G2 and a Netgear WPN824NA.  One will be the backup if the other craps out.  They arrived today and setup ensues.  I’ve decided to use the Linksys first and give it another chance.  The Netgear will sit in the box waiting for its turn. 

It used to be that you need to read some instructions before doing this stuff but no, not any more. They want you to install the CD FIRST!!!  There are stickers and labels in big red bold fonts saying you MUST install the CD first!!!! !!!!! and !!!!! and !!!! and !!!!

NO! I refuse to load more crap on my PC.

I screenshotted all the existing settings from the old router, went into the closet and disconnected it.  I can hear all the computers in the house screaming, “Arghhhhh I lost my Internet connection, the sky has fallen, run, save yourself!!”  Reconnecting was simple.  CAT5 from the cable modem to the new router, CAT5 from the main switch to the new router, power cord, done!

Physical placement was awkward.  The old blue boxes from Linksys were meant to be stacked and they stacked well.  Only short cables were needed to connect one to another.  But this thing looks like it was meant to sit on a desk.  Why?!  Routers are meant to be in a closet, don’t make it some fashion statement for your office.  *sigh* I zip tied it to a rail instead.

Linksys WRT54G2 mounted

The rest should be simple … or so I thought.

The setup was indeed simple.  The setup was virtually identical to the old router.  Same defaul 192.168.1.1 address, same default password, same menus, same everything.  With the exception of the new security option, everything else is the same.  Got it all setup.  Let’s go see if there is any updated firmware or otherwise from Linksys.

And then the trouble begun.  The Linksys site took 3 minutes to load.  Of course, it could just be the site itself.  First test is Google.  Even Google took 10 seconds to load.  Hmmm… this could be a problem.  Microsoft.com, Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, all with extraordinarily slow load time.  No, this IS a problem.  It could be RoadRunner.  Plug the old router back in.  Nope, everyhing works fine.  It IS the new router.  Hmmm, the bad reviews could be right.

Reseach on the net show this to be a common problem.  I had no choice but to go back to Linksys’ site.  After a good 10 minutes and 3 pages later, I found a firmware update.  The router comes with 1.5 burned in.  The new version is 1.5.01.  The release notes mentioned Windows 7 compatibilities.  What?!  Hmmm, could be.  Never thought a router and an OS will pick on each other.  Clicked download and went off to lala land.

I woke up from a nap and looked.  Holy cow, 1.6 MB download (not GB mind you) had not completed in 3 hours.  That should have taken 5 seconds!!  If this firmware doesn’t fix this thing, it will be returned.  The download was finally done after dinner.  Got it installed, rebooted.  Whew!  Everything seems to be working now.

All the sites now loads properly.  The 1.6 MB firmware file downloaded in a few seconds as it should.  All the wireless devices are connecting properly.  So I can call this one done.  Now, let’s see how long it last.

Adventure with mounting iPhone to the car

When I first got the iPhone, one of the first thing I need was to connect it to the car.  My first solution was the iCarPlay from Monster, left over from my iPod.  Of course, they are not compatible.  I then picked up the Griffin RoadTrip.  The first few days was fine.  But over the course of weeks, problems start to arise.

 

1. The goose neck is only flexible to a certain degree, you can bent it beyond that a bit but it always flex back.
2. The connector has a series of interchangeable housing that was meant to fit snuggly with different Apple products, iPhone 3G S included.  Unfortunately, it assume you are using the devices without a case or a sleeve. (?!)  The bottom line is that none of the housing fit so the phone was not fully supported beyond the electrical connection.
3. On our trip to Maui, we discovered that this device is too short to fit in all vehicles (we were driving a Dodge Caliber).  For those that has a low or down angled 12V connector, this simply won’t work.
4. While the product itself is of good quality, the weakest link of the entire setup is the 12V plug in the car.  Unlike most things inside a car, the 12V plug is meant for a cigarette lighter, not anything that has significant weight. 

No. 4 turns out to be the killer.  With the iPhone, the transmitter, and the goose neck all applying weight at a 90 degree angle to the 12V plug, it was starting to fail.  Not the Griffin part mind you, the receptacle in the car dash was starting to come loose.  In fact, I dare say this is applicable to ALL power adapter and/or FM transmitter that puts weight on the 12V plug.  In any case, it was time to find a new solution.

While there seems to be a million products out there, three good rules will help eliminate the majority.

1. If you use a case, any case, your solution requires an adjustable phone holder.
2. The following 3 things must work together: the phone’s connection at the bottom, the opening at the bottom of your case, and the plug from the adapter (whether it is an FM transmitter or just for power).
3. If the product puts weight on the 12V plug, forget it.

In weeks of searching, I was not able to find a single solution that fits all 3 rules.  The conclusion I’ve come to is that I need to separate the two requirements: a FM transmitter and an adjustable holder.  Once that premise changed, the search became easier.

FM transmitters are aplenty.  I ended up picking up the Satechi FM Transmitter.

I chose it because if need be, I can run it without a cable.  Reviews were all over the place but then, so are everything else.  Of course, I had assumed that the opening in the case was wide enough and of course it wasn’t.  So I ended up having to widen the opening with a Dremel so the phone and the transmitter can connect properly.

The holder was another story.  The biggest issue of all: how would it be attached to the car?  There seems to be 3 types of solutions out there:

1. Suction cup that attached to smooth surfaces, most likely wind shield.  This works if the arm is long enough and attaching things to your wind shield does not violate local regulations.  You can attach it to the driver side window too… if you don’t plan to roll it down…ever.
2. Sticky tape of sort sticking to some place on the window/wind shield/dash.  This is very situational.  If you have some flat surfaces, it could work.  If where you are have strong sun or high temperature, it might not.  The adhesive quality is never certain so it might work for a while and fail later.  At the end of the day, when you have to sell the car, you’d have to deal with the glue.
3. Custom mounts that are designed specifically for the purpose.  Some require drilling and mounting a long pole/goose neck through the car’s undercarriage, some mount on the driver seat rail, some are custom fitted pieces that are make/model/year specific and clip/mount to specific part of the dash/vent/etc.

I didn’t want to damage the dash or deal with any surgery in the car.  Hawaiian sun, moisture, and salt will always kill stickies.  I don’t believe in suction cups or sticking things on the windshield either.  The best looking choice left was from a place called ProClip (http://www.proclipusa.com/).  Unfortunately it was also very costly.  I might revisit them as a last resort.

For now, I settled with a JAVOEdge kit.

As I spend a good Saturday morning messing around and deciding how to mount it.  I finally came up with a solution: zip ties.  I pried open the center dash, slipped in a couple of zip ties, and mounted the adjustable holder to the dash.  It wasn’t elegant, and it did block the AC vent a bit, and it did covered up two of the dash buttons (AC and re-circulate, which are left on all the time anyway).

But it will do for now…

Windows 7 upgrade from Dell

One of my boxes was a recent purchase from Dell outlet.  It was new enough that Dell offered free Windows 7 upgrade.  I bought 2 Win7 Pro so the 3rd PC will have to be from this upgrade.  Went to Dell’s site.  It took a bit of looking but finally found the link in the main support page.

https://win7.dell.com/FAQPage.aspx

Filled in the form.  It asked for the Dell tag for the machine, purchase date, etc.  Looks like this is not really Dell as the normal Dell account login doesn’t work.  I bet this is a fulfillment house of sort.  In any case, it was painless.  Just gotta wait for it to arrive.

Upgrading to Windows 7 from Windows 7 Release Candidate – PC 1 of 3

The computer is a Dell XPS 630i.  Nothing unusual, no special hardware.  This is my gaming box so it has a Nvidia GTX 285.  I had Windows 7 Release Candidate (7RC) on it since I bought it.

There wasn’t much to prep as I knew this day will come so I didn’t install much on it.  And over the past year or two, I have progressively move the important things (documents, music, family pictures, etc.) to the NAS.  There were a few software installed, nothing I couldn’t re-download so I just made a note.  I did exported the Internet Explorer favorites and cookies.

Opened the Windows 7 Professional (7Pro) box.  My first question was: 32 or 64bit?  I never did tried any of the 64bit Windows primarily because apps and software had been behind for years.  I never thought they’ve caught up yet.  More on that in a bit.  But 64 bit it is!

Pop the disc.  Error!  64bit installation cannot run off of my 32bit 7RC.  Okay.  Reboot from disc.

The installation is actually painless.  It took a little while but it configured everything, drives, network, even screen resolution.  I still can’t get over how long it took Microsoft to get Windows installation routine to self configure screen resolution.  Geesh.

Throughout the Windows 7 beta and RC, one of the sore point for me was antivirus.  Microsoft recently released Security Essentials.  I’ve used it for a few weeks.  Honestly I don’t know how well it worked as there is no track record.  But it is generally well-behaved, doesn’t bother me much.  And it didn’t slow down the machine even when I’m doing mass copy or play games.  So I’m ditching Norton, Trend Micro, etc.

Downloaded and installed MS Security Essentials.  It updated and was ready.  Sweet.

Adobe Reader.  No issue.

DVD43.  Oops.  This puppy does not run in 64 bit.  Web search revealed that this is a known issue and no fix in sight (some say not likely to have one).  Hmmm… Doesn’t Win7 have XP Mode or something?  Went to MS and found it here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

Downloaded and installed XP Mode, then Virtual PC, configured one.  It took quite a while but was interesting enough.  Redownloaded  class=”hiddenSpellError” pre=”Redownloaded “>DVD43, installed.  Pop a DVD in the drive.  Hmmm…. not working.  DVD43 running inside the Virtual PC cannot detect the DVD… at this point, it was 2 hours into the whole thing… bah, I was right, with the stuff I need to run, 64bit is just going to cause more problem.  Back to 32bit!

Pop the disc in, reboot, start from scratch. … some time later … I was back where I was.  This time DVD43 worked fine, as are Handbrake, PDF Creator, etc.  Ran Windows Update, 7 patches down and it is all set.

Aside from the 64 vs 32bit thing, it was relatively painless.