roll for initiative

Well, after a few days of being snowed in I finally made my way back to the Suzuki dealership to see what the damage was from my lil’ spill on Yellow Peril (see original post for the play by play).

For those too lazy to read the original post, here’s a quick recap: I was making a turn at 5mph and I hit a patch of sand and my bike slid out from underneath me. No damage to me, minimal damage to the bike.

Or so I thought. The damage estimate is back and if I ignore all the minor scratches and only fix the stuff that needs fixin’ it’s going to run me around $450 for parts and labor. Owza. That’s gonna sting.

Looks like I was a tad bit ahead of the time with the whole loyalty program thing for online travel sites (see original here). Expedia.com is rolling out a new loyalty program, effusively called the “Thank You Network“.

Okay, so they’ve probably been working on this thing for a year or so … so chances are they weren’t wholly influenced by my insightful if not-quite-ahead-of-its-time ramblings.
In any case, the pretty basic system: you earn one ThankYou point for every dollar you spend on Expedia. You then redeem points for “stuff”.

This illustrative chart walks you through the complexities of the system:

Unfortunately, it’s not immediately clear how this stacks up to other miles or awards programs; I took a quick look over the Thank You Network site, but did not find a list of how many points it takes to book a national or international flight.

But … I wonder if you can get points from the Thank You Network AND from the airline on which you’ve booked your flight. In fact, if you use a mileage credit card to book your travel on Expedia on an airline … you could potentially get credited for the trip on 3 different rewards system! Hmmm this might be worth looking into.

Some background is necessary for today’s post:

In April, I took the Motorcycle Safety’s Foundation Basic Rider Course. Highly recommend it for anyone who’s ever thought of giving motorcycles or scooter a try. Took it and LOVED it.

And bought a used 2002 Suzuki SV650.

It’s yellow and it’s purty and it’s f’ing responsive. And I call it “Yellow Peril” … for I am “witty” and “edgy” and don’t have a lot of “social filters”…

Here’s a lovely pic of the lovely Ms. Yellow Peril”

And now onto today’s main event …

I picked up Yellow Peril from the shop today. I had to take it in for its regularly scheduled 7500 mile tune up. Picked it up around 9am and had a lovely dry (yet somewhat cold) ride across the bridge. Everything’s fine and dandy and it’s good to be on the road again.

Left work around 6-ish. It’s dark and cold but it’s still dry, which hasn’t been the case for the last 5 days or so. But I’m happy to be riding again and looking forward to using the carpool lane all the way back home.

I pull out of the parking lot and … lucky me, the light’s green. I accelerate towards the light, roll off the throttle, brake slightly, release, push the handlebars to counter steer and lean into the corner. I start to roll on the throttle and then my bike is spinning out about 10 feet in front of me and I’m sliding on the ground.

W.

T.

F.

I stand up and run after the bike. I think I actually stood up in mid-skid. And let’s hear it for protection! Luckily I was wearing my overpants as my right hip took the brunt of the fall and skid. Anyway, I run after the bike and pick it up. Or rather, try to pick it up. Take two. I employ the patented pick-up-the-bike-you-just-dumped-moron technique I read about in a book someplace … and it worked like a charm.

A little bit of pushing later and the bike and I are by the side of the road. Motorists were nice and didn’t run me over when I went down. Guess that’s what passes for nice - not running you over. Though props for the one guy that stopped and asked if I was okay.

As I examined that bike for damage, I noticed that the road had a slight dusting of … well … dust. I work in some god forsaken corporate park literally by some gravel pits (and by literally I literally mean literally). It’s like someone decided that the best place for some generic corporate office park is was out by Uncle Owen’s and Aunt Beru’s place.

Luckily I was only doing about 10 mph, so I have nothing worse than a small red spot on my right hip where I went down. The bike is okay, too. Only a broken brake lever, a bent brake pedal, and maybe some other slight damage. But shit. That f’ing sucked.

Sure I like to push it a bit, but I’m also a big fan of statistics and a huge fan of the Hurt Report.

Here’s a little tidbit that I’ve known about for a while but now find very amusing: Accident rates for riders with less than 6 months experience is LOWER (but still high) than for riders with 6 months to 1 year of experience.
The reasoning is that between 0 and 6 months you’re too freakin’ scared to really push anything, so you’re well within the safety margin. At 6 months, you start to feel more secure in your abilities and your bike’s and you start to push it. But it’s probably not until after about a year that your skills actually improve to the point where you can push things … thus the higher accident rates between 6 months to 1 year.

Let’s do that math … took MSF class in April … bought the bike in mid-April … been riding since then … April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November … crap. 8 months.

Another 4 months and I would have been in the clear.

The last post was just a setup for today’s brilliant (hopefully) thought.

As previously mentioned, I’m not a big sports fan - I don’t watch a lot of sports. I do get into 4-year sports - the kind that only show up once every 4 years, like the Olympics and the World Cup.

And I’m not a big fan of sports video games. No knowing much about sports is actually a big handicap when playing sports game - especially in multiplayer matches against people who actually know that they are doing.

But like my interests in the 4 years spots, every 4 years or so I do like to bust out the latest version of FIFA. True to form, during the last World Cup I did play a few matches of FIFA on the Xbox 360 and found it quite enjoyable.

And the TV to Games to TV cross pollination mentioned yesterday is quite evident in FIFA 2006. For example, in FIFA 2006 you have many camera options, one of which is a “broadcast camera” which uses a camera style similar to what you would experience when watching a game on TV. I haven’t tried playing many matches with this camera style so I’m not sure how it’ll work during actual gameplay, but it’s a great example of video games adapting to user expectations based on their experiences with traditional media. Not to mention (too late!) the real world broadcasters that provide the in-game color for the game. I could go on and list various other ways in which the video game borrows from TV broadcasts to make the experience more exciting and “realistic”.

But what I really want to talk about is the in-game Heads Up Display (HUD) and how TV could borrow from it to make the viewing experience a bit more enjoyable, especially for us quadrennial fans. (And hopefully, these ideas won’t detract from the more frequent viewer … unlike the horrid super puck from back in the day.)

In any case, as can be seen in this image, the HUD in FIFA displays various bits of information. Some of these you’d see on a TV broadcast, like the time remaining, the score, and the teams playing (duh). Some of these are specific to the game, like the player’s name (and his stats) who is currently being controlled by the video game player. The final bit of the HUD is an image of the pitch (that’s the field to you yanks) with colored dots representing the players and the ball and their location in the pitch.

And THAT’S the bit that I think broadcasts could borrow from the FIFA games (if EA hasn’t patented that, which they may have). With RFID technology, it’s possible to put a chip on each player and the ball (which they did in the last World Cup anyway). When viewing the game you’d get to see the action near the ball, but you could also glance at the pitch overview graphic and see where the defenders of the attacking team were, how far up their goalie was playing … generally, you’d get a sense of where all the other off-screen players were. Personally, I think this would open up the TV viewing experience greatly … making it somewhat more similar to watching the game at a stadium where you can decide to follow the action or focus on the other players to see how they’re setting up for the next play.

Here’s an in-game clip that shows a bit of the gameplay and the HUD in action: FIFA 2006 Gameplay Video. Take a look at it in full-screen mode and see how that little graphic gives you a fuller appreciation of the entire pitch.

So …all you all footballers out there … would this add to your viewing experience or is this another Super Puck?

Video games have long borrowed from other media forms. Developers use cutscenes and in game cinematography to drive the storyline - and the best cutscenes are as effective as the best Hollywood has to offer. Horror games make great use of sound effects and music to heighten the suspense, much like horror films have been doing since Nosferatu.

Games have also borrowed from TV. One of my favorite games from back in the day was Interstate ‘76, which had a hokey ’70s TV show feel, including a great opening sequence. Watch this great opening movie and credit sequence and tell me that it doesn’t hit that ’70s action series feel on the head: I’76 Opening Movie.

Today, video games are becoming such a big part of popular culture that we’re starting to see some design ideas going the other way - from video games to TV and movies.

Sports broadcasts and games are a prime example of this cross pollination. Football video games were overlaying the scrimmage and 1st down lines decades ago - which is a common practice in football broadcasts these day.

Sports broadcasts have also borrowed some camera techniques from video games. The flyover, fly-by-wire, aerial camera required need technology to pull off but video games have been using that for a long time … which they probably originally borrowed from the movies to begin with.

Examples of this type of borrowing are everywhere. The Matrix’s “we’re all living in a virtual reality MMORPG” is heavily influenced by video games. Max Payne took the bullet cam and made it the interactive bullet time. And it’s only a matter of time before sports broadcasts figure out how to do real-time bullet cam. And soon after that DVRs will figure out how to give users the ability not only to stop and rewind live TV, but also allow the viewer to change camera angles at the same time … basically a bullet time camera for live TV.

Sign me up!