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A year ends...
Last weekend marked the end of our Masters in Information Technology in eBusiness Technology program. It was a long last week, first we gave a presentation to our customer, who was thrilled and dazzled by our work, then we had several late nights to prepare for the final presentation to a panel of judges, which we had on Friday.
We didn’t win the grand price, but we were very happy with our presentation and are certain that we came in a close second. After the presentation our client took us to Dave and Busters for a night of fine food and games. At the end he surprised us with a gift certificate, because he felt we really deserved a price. And this meant much more to us than if we had wooed the judges into awarding us the grand price. After all we had been working nine weeks for our customer and not for the judges.
Saturday night, my family and friends had a very nice dinner in the Tin Angel Restaurant on Mount Washington. The five course menu, actually a four course menu with a tiny bite of melon at the end, was really good, especially the main course. In addition we were fortunate enough that it was a nice and clear night offering us beautiful views of Downtown.
On Sunday our program had its very own graduation ceremony. We all got to wear the classic academic regalia (cap, gown and hood) and could walk the stage to receive a piece of paper (our diplomas won’t be ready till October). It was a very nice experience and at the end we of course had to throw our hats into the air ;).
This concludes my adventures with the MSIT eBusiness Technology Program. I made some great friends, lived through challenging but also interesting times both on- and off-campus (Steelers winning the Super Bowl and Penguins winning the Stanley Cup in the same year!) and I wouldn’t want to miss a minute of it.Labels: cmu, Master, pittsburgh, usa
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Graduation Dinner, Party and Moving
This week has been extremely busy. First I had to start packing to be ready when I'd move out on Saturday. Then we had a Graduation Dinner Thursday night at Monterey Bay Fish Grotto, allegedly one of the best restaurants on Mount Washington. However, we were not that thrilled by the food. Even though we valued a choice of six main dishes, four of which were fish, the orders were slightly mixed up and the taste didn't reach our high expectations.
On Friday evening we had a small party on the top floor patio, where I finally could try one of the most (in)famous American games, at least in university circles: Beer Pong. The goal is to try to hit a ping pong ball into your opponents cups. That is much harder than it sounds and we managed to epically fail and not hit a single cup...
On Saturday I thought I'd sleep in to have enough energy for moving, but nature conspired against me and I was wide awake by 6:45am. Once awake my conscience started bugging me that I couldn't leave my apartment in its current state. You have to know though that expect for the stove it was already cleaner than when I moved in. So I thoroughly cleaned the whole flat for 3.5 hours. Now I'm willing to bet 100$ that this apartment has never been this clean, when a tenant moved out, in at least the last twenty years!
And now I'm waiting for kind Marcos, who generously offered me a space in his living room for a couple of days, until I can move to a hotel, and also offered to help me move the last of my stuff.
Lots of pictures from all these events can be found in my gallery.Labels: cmu, Fun, Master, pictures, usa
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Painting The Fence at Carnegie Mellon University
One of the most intriguing and fascinating traditions at Carnegie Mellon University is painting The Fence. The Fence is located in the middle of the cut (basically the center of the main campus) and is a highly visible landmark on campus. Student groups are allowed to paint the Fence only during the time between midnight and sunrise and only using regular paint and regular brushes (if you use spray paint, you'll get cited for vandalism!). As long as two people are stationed at the Fence, no one is allowed to change it's message and thus one regularly sees tents around the Fence while school is on. Fortunately, in summer everything is a bit quieter and we did not have to fight for it and could pick a day with perfect weather.
We decided to dedicate the Fence to the practicum of our MSIT ebiz Program and could persuade our client to sponsor the paint and brushes.
And so we met yesterday at midnight to start this project. Painting the groundwork was very fast, with five people and five big brushes we finished in under an hour. But once the color started to dry we spotted many places where we needed to add a second layer. Once everything looked good and the paint was sufficiently dry we started applying our message. This was more difficult than expected. For once we only had one small and one medium brush available, so only two people could write at a time. Another issue was that with the ongoing night, we did a couple of spelling mistakes, which threw us back a bit, since we had to recolor the section and wait till it dried again. We completed the final touches at 4.45am, much later than we expected. But we were incredibly happy with the outcome. The orange ground color looked fantastic against the green grass background.
More pictures in my picasa library.
PS: Since we did not find any information about supplies needed to paint the fence, I wanted to share this with you. We used:- 2 gallons of ground color
- ~1/4 gallon of writing color
- 5 big brushes (4 inch) for the background color.
- 1 medium brush (2 inch) for the letters on the pillar. [this was not enough. Would suggest 2 to 3 of those]
- 1 small brush (1 inch) for letters on rest of the fence. [this was not enough. Would suggest 4 to 5 of those]
- 1 roll of masking tape for straight letters on the pillar
These numbers heavily depend on the number of helpers you can organize. But we could have saved a lot of time if we had more small brushes for writing.Labels: cmu, Master, pictures, pittsburgh, university, usa
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The End is Near
Today we completed the 16th and last task in our graduate program. Now we can take a couple of days break before the practicum starts next Monday. The practicum is a nine week project with an outside Sponsor and should give us an opportunity to apply all the things we've learned this year.
 MSIT eBiz Class of '09 Labels: cmu, pictures, university
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Geeky Graduation
Last Sunday was THE big and long-awaited day for many students: Commencement! All graduating students who completed their studies last December or now in May and some of the students who will graduate in August were invited to participate. (Even though I also graduate in August, our program will have its own Commencement ceremony at the end of August). The main ceremony was interesting mainly because of keynote speaker Eric Schmidt's amusing anecdotes and the attendance of a celebrity. Phylicia Rashad, who I remember very well for her role as Claire Huxtable in The Cosby Show, received an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree.
The handing over of the diploma was done in separate ceremonies by the different schools. I joined the School of Computer Science ceremony, which turned out very geeky with a robotic bag pipes player and professors with light swords.
The ceremony itself dragged on a bit as there were more than 300 diplomas to hand over. And we were all glad when it was over and we could enjoy the free snacks ;)Labels: cmu, pictures, university, usa
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I've always won Time Agent
I got the chance to play an old but very cool game yesterday at the CMU Game Club.
Time Agent: A game where players try to change the past to become rulers of the universe and then uninvent time travel to have always been the rulers of the universe. It was an epic battle and for a long time it looked like I've always been the looser, but on the last two turns I caught up and profited from a fortunate uninvention of Rejuvenation Technology ("Rejuvenation Technology? What Rejuvenation Technology?") and so it turned out that I had always been the winner :). A small side note, the game lasted for almost six hours!
Labels: cmu, games, pictures
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Settlers of Catan Tournament
Yesterday I participated in CMU's Settlers of Catan Tournament. 30 people were present and two rounds of Catan were played to determine the winners. The first game started bad for me. Even though I hand first placement, my numbers never came up. But then two things happened: First, the guy who was miles in the lead was more interested in hurting us than ending the game, which gave everyone more time to expand and second, the dice turned in my favor in the second half of the game. And so I managed to scrap a slim victory.
The second game was the reverse. I was in the lead for a long time, but then my numbers stopped coming up and so I had to let someone pass me. I still managed to hold on to the longest road and came in second.
Finally I ranked 7th, which made me eligible for a prize! :)Labels: cmu, games
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Wild Turkey Chase
Leaving campus tonight I spotted something curious coming towards me from the parking lot: A wild turkey! I quickly grabbed my N95 and gave chase, taking pictures on the way. Unfortunately, the results aren't thrilling, however, you can still see recognize the turkey:
After following it halfway across campus it decided it had enough, and flew away... (my gallery has a couple more unclear pictures)Labels: animals, cmu, pictures
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Spring Break here I come!
We just finished our presentation of the latest task, which dealt with a Business Plan for Outsourcing Direct-To-Customer Sales for a Holiday Decoration Company.
This was the last official event I had to attend before the start of Spring Break and I'm so glad to get a break!Labels: cmu, pictures
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Saturday at the Game Club...
Last Saturday I was part of a special event at the game club. One member brought a game he designed for playtesting. Obviously it's top secret so I cannot reveal too much ;), but it was a very interesting concept dealing with Hackers and the Internet.
After playing a couple of games of Tsuro and two rounds of Dominion, I got the chance to try another game. Thurn and Taxis plays in medieval Europe, with Zurich on the map!, and the player's goal was to connect different cities with postal routes. Quite interesting concept and definitely a game to play again.Labels: cmu, games
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Board Games return
Saturday of the first school week brought a reunion with the board game club. This time I already joined them at 1pm, when it officially started and so I got the opportunity to play lots of games (some of them even new ones):- Tsuro: A fast and easy game where the players have to follow lines and try to stay on the board.
- Puerto Rico: An intriguing plantation / settlement game.
- Tichu: Still cool card game. Best was when I managed to disrupt our opponents Tichu and Grand Tichu.
- Euphrat & Tigris: My non-combat strategy left me with the biggest empire but not enough tokens to win the game, still was a fun round.
- Saint Petersburg: A cool money management board game, which I managed to win by a slight margin :)
- Alhambra: An intriguing palace building game, which I lost by a big margin, this was probably the revenge for Saint Petersburg ;)
- El Grande: An older game which won the German "Game of the Year" Award in 1996. Despite this recommendation we couldn't warm to the game, which seemed to random at times.
- Dominion: To finish we played two rounds of Dominion of which I won the second with a well-functioning Market-Village-Festival Strategy.
Labels: cmu, games
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Enlightened Christmas Event
Like every good Consulting Company, our team held a pre-Christmas event! However, since we were only students we were a little bit limited regarding the budget ;). So we went to Qdoba for dinner and then for an All You Can Bowl event.
We had great fun and were happy to adopt Woo as our 6th team member ;)
And here's our team:
Labels: cmu, Fun
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Games, Movie & Dancing
Since I didn't come around to blog about last Saturday's Game Club Meeting, I thought I'd catch up now.
Last Saturday we played:
- Ticket to Ride - USA 1910: The US edition of Ticket to Ride with an extra expansion set was far more challenging than the European Game, because many people ended up building the same routes. Nevertheless, it was quite interesting.
- Kingsburg: Still a fun and luck-based game. I managed to win by a big margin :)
Afterwards, we went to the Southside Works cinema to catch a screening of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This was the first time I saw this movie on the big screen and it still is brilliant and lots of fun. My cheekbones started aching after the first five minutes ;).
This Saturday I returned to the Game Club, where the Dominion fever has started to grow and so we ended up with three copies of the game (two of which were played concurrently). So as you could guess, I played:
- Dominion: Nothing to add, still a fantastic game.
- Kingsburg: This time I was not quite as lucky as last time, but I still managed to tie for first place :)
Then I went on to an English Country Dance Meet, which was held close to the University. Even though I was the youngest by about 20 years, it was a lot of fun. We danced countless dances, almost all of which were new to me. But the great thing about English Country Dancing is that they are very easy to pick up. To my great delight we also danced Picking Up Sticks, one of the two English Country Dances I previously learned in Switzerland. After two hours of dancing I was really tired, but very glad that I went there and I'm sure to go back in the new year.Labels: cmu, dancing, games, movie
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Games & Early Thanksgiving
Even though I attended another Game Club meeting yesterday, it was cut short by other plans. But one thing after another.
At the Game Club I played Tigris & Euphrat, one of my favorites, and Brass. Brass is a strategy game revolving around the industrial revolution offering a very interesting game play, and I don't say that just because I won the game ;).
But then it was time for the official part of the evening. Our program held an early Thanksgiving Dinner at the Pittsburgh Golf Club, an event I couldn't miss! The food was very authentic - turkey, sweet potatoes (with marshmallow topping), cranberry sauce, beans and more - and extremely delicious. So in the true spirit of Thanksgiving (eating too much ;) ) I had two helpings of the main course and tried all the deserts. The Pumpkin Tiramisu was quite exotic but also very tasty. Even though the evening ended a bit abruptly, and we didn't get a chance to take more group pictures, it was a very pleasant experience ^^.Labels: cmu, games, Master
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Social Web and World of Warcraft
Here's the paper I wrote for my Social Web Homework:
Background
Before discussing the different social aspects, I wanted to give a short overview about the way I tackled this assignment. The assigned research condition was to create a human character, first play a couple of hours solo and then a couple of hours with an assigned group. Reaching level 6 soloing, I considered my character ready for group play.
My main character:
Wanting to explore the world a bit more, and not risking running away with levels, I created an alternate character on another realm. This time I picked a dwarf priest which I also quickly reached level 5. After playing with my assigned group for a couple of hours, I had reached level 8, 2 levels shy of the 10 goal. Unfortunately, a new expansion was released just then and the realm of my main character was regularly completely congested. So I continued playing with my dwarf and eventually reached level 10 and visited both Ironforge and Stormwind City, taking the Deeprun Tram to go in the one direction and a Gryphon to get back.
My alternate character:
A more detailed account about my experiences can be found on my blog: http://pratchettfan.blogspot.com/search/label/WoW
Social Aspects
Learning the Ropes / Encouraging Newcomers
WoW tries to show new players how the game works through displaying context sensitive tips. So the user is not overwhelmed with a flood of information, but successively learns new things as they become relevant to him. This works very well for people who have played similar role-playing games, because they are familiar with the principles behind the game mechanics. So I had no problems finding my way around, picking up the first quest and getting started. However, a complete newbie to these kinds of games might be so distracted by the myriad of controls and things going on, that he might miss these tips. A possible improvement would be an optional meta-game tutorial, which would describe the function of the key elements on the screen (such as health bar, map, and tips) before the user is let loose in the world. Experienced users can choose to abort this if they are already familiar with the concepts.
There are two different elements in play which encourage newcomers to continue playing:
1) The quests which start out being quite easy to accomplish and then incrementally get more difficult, taking more time and effort to complete as the game goes on.
2) The other players which have reached higher levels and can from time to time be encountered. Such an encountered leads to a wow effect. The newbie sees how cool and powerful his character can become if he only dedicates enough time to it.
The first element definitely was a conscious design choice of Blizzard, whereas I’m not so sure about the second element. I’d guess that it is something that just naturally occurred as more players reached higher levels and kept on playing.
What can we learn from this? Even though there are advantages to keep newbies separated from the harsh reality of the game until they have got their bearings, a complete separation would eliminate the second point. So it may be a good thing to strike a balance, starting the player in a low threat area, but still giving higher level characters incentives to visit these places from time to time.
Solo vs Group Play
Playing solo at the start of the game worked well for me; it gave me enough time to get used to the controls and the quests were simple enough, that I didn’t need other people to finish. However, speaking with one of my group members, I realised that this may not be true for players inexperienced with role-playing games. All he did to level up was killing monsters; he wasn’t aware that there were quests which made levelling up more meaningful and easier.
As the game progressed and the quests got more difficult, group play became almost mandatory. With my dwarf healer I stood no chance of completing some quests, because I was regularly overwhelmed by the number of enemies around. Fighting with other players helped distribute the aggression of the enemies and dramatically increase our chance of success. So knowing a couple of people with the same level and the same goals works well at this point. But even solo players are not completely at a loss. There being so many other players around and I often was invited into short term parties were trying to complete the same quest. Nevertheless, finding a party can be quite hard for certain quests and requires a fair amount of luck and good timing (at least with the trial account and its limitations).
So we can observe two kinds of group play in WoW. First, partnerships of convenience of solo players who happen to be in the same region and have the same goals and second, groups which have a long term goal of playing together and completing several consecutive quests. More often than not this second type of group is organised around a guild.
Early in the game the first kind of groups seem to be more important than in the end-game phase, this is mainly because the quests early in the game do not require a lot of coordination and time to solve and even strangers can easily step in and help. In the end-game, however, when quests and raids become long and dangerous, coordination and trust are key, both things which don’t come naturally to partnerships of convenience and so guilds start playing an integral part in the game.
Dying
Keeping the consequences of failure low is key to keep people from becoming frustrated and quitting the game. WoW’s concept of dying strikes a fair balance between punishment and continuing the game. Whereas it is annoying to walk back to the corpse, achievements a player completed so far are retained and he can continue with his quest. In many solo games the consequences for dying are that you have to start the level / quest from the beginning again. This can become very frustrating, especially when you die close to completing the quest. Nevertheless I had a couple of problems with this mechanism of dying. Exploring the area I ventured into the Gnomeregan mines. There was no one to stop my decent. However, once at the bottom I was promptly killed by monsters far above my level. Walking back to my corpse I saw that the entrance now also was crowded with these powerful monsters, apparently a party marched in just before I ventured inside, and so was promptly killed again trying to flee the dungeon.
Having to do this several times can be extremely annoying. So in the spirit of encouraging newcomers to continue playing, I would welcome an emergency exit which becomes available if the dungeon one finds oneself in is drastically overpowered.
Conclusion
Blizzard did a good job keeping the game fun for newcomers as well as old timers, offering a wide range of activities to pursue which address the interests of the different player types, such as Achiever, Explorer, Socialiser and Killer. And so I can understand how people get addicted to the game. And if the game had come out a couple of years earlier, even I might have started playing it. But at the current moment in time there are too many other interesting things going on, not leaving enough time to play WoW economically (playing enough to warrant the monthly fee).Labels: cmu, games, WoW
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Football Dominion
Today was the last game of the season for Carnegie Mellon's Football team. Since I missed all the other games, I decided to go and check it out. Even thought the weather was rather unfriendly, it rained lightly most of the time, it was pretty enjoyable. Carnegie Mellon had a good game against Chicago and won 28 to 21 in the end.
Afterwards, it being a Saturday, I joined the CMU gaming Club. This time I learned no new Games, rather I played Dominion for 6 hours straight and slowly I'm getting an idea for some of the strategies, even managing a tie for 1st place once. But even when loosing it was a lot of fun! Definitely a game I'll want to have in Switzerland. Now I need to start figuring out if I actually have enough space in my luggage to bring everything I want back home...Labels: cmu, games
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Task 5: Wireless Municipal Area Network
Today we just had the presentation of our fifth task "Wireless Municipal Area Network (WiMAN)" in which we had to come up with a suggestion for a WiMAN implementation for Pittsburgh. I'm writing about this task because several interesting things have happened.
- After four tasks with my initial team, we were assigned into new teams, so we had to come up with a new organisation and a new name.
- Presentations were open for everyone again, and so I chose / was picked to be the first presenter
- The presentation was, as in task 1, extremely persuasive.
In the morning I gave a trial run of the presentation and I was again extremely nervous. When the presentations were about to start and we were waiting for the faculty, my nervousness wouldn't go away, so I picked up "Discworld: The Graphic Novels" and read a couple of pages. This surprisingly helped alleviate my stress levels and when it was finally my turn to give the presentation I was very calm.
The presentation was, in my humble opinion, a big success (we got the fewest critical questions from the professor), which was only possible because our team did a very good job in preparing the report and presentation. So I'm looking forward to three more interesting tasks with this great team! :)Labels: cmu
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Last innocent post ;)
Many of my friends played World of Warcraft (WoW) and I was frequently asked why I didn't play, my answer was always: "It just doesn't sound that fascinating to me." So peer pressure had no effect on my desire to play the game, even when I ended up being the only one at the table who couldn't join the latest WoW discussion.
But now Carnegie Mellon does what peer pressure couldn't, they get me to play WoW... It is one of the homework assignments in the Social Web class I'm taking this year. We were assigned a race and two team mates and should play about two hours solo and two hours in a team and then analyze this experience in light of the social theories we covered in class. Fortunately, there is a 10 day free trial, so we don't have to invest money for the homework, and we are guaranteed to return to the real world within ten days, at least that's what the teachers hope...
I try to keep writing about my experiences, but in case I disappear from the radar send a search party to US server Alleria ;)Labels: cmu, games, WoW
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Medieval Literature for Children
Whilst wandering through Carnegie Mellon's main library I stumbled upon a book which caught my eye: Medieval Literature for Children. Here's a short review:
Medieval literature for children offers a fascinating look into the medieval ages. The book contains a collection of essays, each focusing on a different work from medieval times, discussing the origins and authors (if known) of the work, putting it into context as children's literature and finally giving a small excerpt of the work itself. I can highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about life and literature in the Middle Ages.Labels: cmu, Literature, medieval
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A+
Today I got my first homework back. In the class Social Web we had to write an essay about our experiences, and the experiences of newcomers in general, in editing Wikipedia. Having spent a lot of time to write a thorough analysis, I was very pleased by the result. I got an A+!Labels: cmu
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