The Falling Blog

Friday is the right time for…

Making good on a promise to my daughter. 

At the end of the last marking period, my daughter came home with some troubling marks. She’s in second grade, so “marks” is subjective. They are metrics regarding her citizenship, engagement, conformance to the rules, etc. But they were not great. She isn’t a bad child, far from it actually. And although she is my daughter and I am biased in her favor, I did not and do not believe that her apparent lack of adherence to the social contract of the classroom was from her being a bad child or even a bad student. To me? They spoke of someone who was really bored while at school. And, IMHO, they  looked to me like someone who wasn’t properly motivated. 

When I was in school, I remember being bored to tears. I used to read encyclopedias for fun while at home. Much of the stuff they put in front of me in elementary was just that, elementary. (Also, encyclopedia, pre-internet, these were tomes of knowledge that were set up like wikipedia but you had to buy them and they were heavy :D). 

I see my daughter dealing with the same thing. She’s really smart. And she’s really bored of waiting for the school to teach her more things. And as a result, she’s acting out, not listening, doing her own thing and otherwise being a pain in the ass for her poor teacher. That won’t do. 

I took her aside at the end of the last marking period with her report card in hand. I went through it line by line and talked to her about what each mark meant, and how many of them were below the standard that her mom and I had set for her. I told her they needed to improve. I gave her a reason to improve her. 

I made her a deal, a contract, for her improvement. If she would make it through the next marking period with improvement of any kind in any part, we would go out together on a “Daddy-daughter” date to a place of my choosing. If she was able to improve every section of her report card by Today, January 20, 2012, we would go to a place of her choosing. By God if she hasn’t had a single problem in school since. The report cards are due out next week. I’m very eager to see what the real numbers are. But in truth I know they’ve all improved. 

In the mean time, I’ve started engaging her in subjects that far outstrip what she’s learning in second grade. I do this for a lot of reasons, and none so important as a child’s potential should not be limited by their perceived age but how they act and what they really can handle. At night, I’ve been staying up and crafting her ciphers and math puzzles. I’ve been slowly introducing her to algebra through logic problems. I even broke out some geometry just to pique her interest. Her math scores at school have improved dramatically from the graded quizzes I’ve seen come home. 

I’m looking forward to our little “Daddy-daughter” outing. She mentioned something about wanting to go to the local natatorium for some swimming.

Anywhere you want to go kiddo.  

Skyrim and Desparation

Desperation. 

Personal experiences and observations in the new elderscrolls game. 

I’ve played Arena, Morrowind, and Oblivion. I have probably over 500 hours logged in those games (not an exhaggeration).

Desperation is a key driver in these games. You start out penniless and almost without any advantages. You pick a job or go adventuring. You begin to break into places because you desparately need to eat, protect yourself, cure your disease or find out what is over there…These games can grab hold and not let go because they appeal to the basic parts of any great adventure: fear and hope. 

There are things about Morrowind that I really didn’t like: Load times, fully exploitable potions system, really boring combat and cliff racers.  There are tons of things that I disliked about Oblivion: Gimmicky radiant AI, terrible level scaling,  dumb mini-games instead of actual gameplay, fantasy setting made banal by poor design choices and fast travel.

There are things I loved about both of those old games. Morrowind was lonely and alien. You could get lost and be afraid as you had no way of teleporting home because you couldn’t afford divine intervention or you were terribly injured and far from home, overencumbered and doomed. The fear and the desparation were palpable things to be faced and overcome. but you had moments of adrenaline when you succeeded or when you could teleport out of harms way. The banality of Tamriel  was a stark contrast to the hellworld in an Oblivion gate. You really had to gear up to face those challenges (but there were too many gates, too much seeing the monster). However, there was a moment of desparation that could be found. You had to survive to the middle of the gate and grab the key to shut the place down. You often had to fight high classed enemies to do so. I found it to be exhilerating. run in grab that gate key and get thrown back into the real world. Fear, hope to succeed, relief.

Skyrim does fear and desperation very well. I have found and faced enemies that I had no right to best and I found myself triumphant if only just. I am only a level 14 and I had a battle with a dragon. Not my first. My first encounter with a dragon I had a bunch of NPCs assisting and distracting as I lobbed low level arrows at his giant wings and cowered behind a rock. The second dragon I barely assisted with. this last one, I all alone on a rock mesa surrounded by hot springs and geysers. Very little cover was afforded and the dragon’s black shadow passed over me and the god damned music started. He almost killed me three separate times. I had an OMG emergency! scroll in my inventory (hold over habit from Morrowind) that surrounded me with healing and a circle the dragon could not enter. his fire could. I had taken him to half health before my inventory was empty of any potions at all. I began to devour every ingredient in my possession and every scrap of food, casting majick like a madman and firing arrows. I ate my last butterfly and fired a final arrow and the dragon collapsed in a heap of fire and bones. This game is not without its problems. If you know anything about game design then that shouldn’t suprise you given the scope and technical brilliance that Bethsoft goes for when they make a title like this. I really have no complaints and I can assure you that they have learned a lot from the Oblivion and Fallout experiences. But they remember what made their older games great. the atmosphere, the environments, and the character interactions have been made so organic that I have characterized this game experience as digital timetravel. You’ll load it, you’ll play it, and when you turn it off you’ll have lost hours in that world. I cannot recommend this game enough.   

Every other amazing bit of this game I will not spoil at all. there is too much to see and too much to experience for me to do it any justice.