For personal reasons, I’ve decided to take a break from the longer written posts. Instead, my weekly updates are likely to consist of cute cats, pretty flowers, and whatever else I decide to photograph. Enjoy!
Hiatus Announcement + Cats
Month: August 2022
Cardiac Arrest: It’s The Best!
If that seems like a ludicrously terrible catchline, I’m doing something right! A couple months ago, I had a prompt to write an ad that deliberately employed at least 3 logical fallacies. I figured I might as well ride that train all the way to Station Absurdity, and this is the result:
Furthermore, we are proud to introduce the Cardiac Arrest deep-fried quadruple decker coconut butter burger, served completely encased in white chocolate! First of all, it's delicious! According to acclaimed astronaut Jessica Gonzalez, it's "the most incredibl[e] greasy thing [she's] ever consumed!" (The recommended maximum consumption is one serving per month; Greasivores Co. is not liable for any weight gain, heart conditions or death that may occur by disregarding this recommendation.) Cardiac Arrest: it's the best!
Tic Tac Chec
Tic Tac Toe meets chess in Tic Tac Chec, a short and simple strategy game that can be used to teach new players how chess pieces move, or to shake things up a bit for more seasoned players. I’ve been playing chess for years, but adjusting to new mechanics is always a bit of a learning curve, and our first round was actually kind of embarrassing – we were both so busy setting ourselves up in chess terms, we forgot the Tic Tac Toe part. But I’m getting ahead of myself… again.
Each player has four pieces: a pawn, a knight, a bishop, and a rook, all of which move the same as they do in chess, except the pawn switches directions when it reaches the end of the board. Tracking that is a little tricky, so I’d advise having the pawn on the side of its space closest to where it’s going next, instead of centered. We figured that one out the hard way, too.
The board is a 4×4 grid, and the goal is to align all four of your pieces vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. The first step of this is having pieces on the board – on your turn, you may place any one of your pieces on any open space. Once you have three pieces on the board, you may begin to move and capture as you would in regular chess; captured pieces are returned to their players and “can immediately be played again on any open square.” It’s up for interpretation whether than means “they get to place it as soon as you hand it back to them” or just “there’s no cooldown before they can use a turn to put it back on the board,” so sort that out with your opponent before the game begins. It’s also up to you whether the “three pieces on the board before moving” rule applies to more than the beginning of the game. The rules on this one are pretty loosely defined, so there’s a lot of room to experiment and see which way is the most fun for you!
It’s A Wide And Wonderful Zooniverse!
Zooniverse is a volunteer-powered research platform, which I stumbled across by accident and have been obsessed with ever since. “What kind of research?” you might ask – a reasonable question, the answer to which is yes. They’ve got NASA projects, medical research, digitization of centuries-old handwritten documents… the list goes on and on. Another cool example is Saint George on a Bike, which is training an AI to caption European visual art from the 12th to 18th centuries, based off human input!
The great part about all this is that you don’t need to be an expert. Each project has a tutorial and a field guide, which will tell you everything you need to know to perform your classifications! Sometimes the images are a little unclear – they were taken at night, or in motion, or the handwriting is just awful – but because each piece of data goes through multiple people, everyone’s best guesses can still provide a useful approximation. (Ex: “We can’t agree what kind of wallaby that is, but it’s definitely not a dingo.”) Personally, I’m partial to trail cam research, where you’re identifying animals, so the classification pictured below is from the WildCam Gorongosa project based in Mozambique. They have some extra features in their system, so not only is there a field guide with information on each animal, you can filter by build, horns, pattern, etc. to narrow down your options.
Each project has its own homepage with a progress bar, which shows what percent of the data has been classified, the number of volunteers who’ve worked on it, and other relevant numbers. There’s an explanation of the project itself, and an About page in the toolbar with more detailed information. Also in the toolbar is a Classify link (there’s also one of these on the main page, and I appreciate that there’s multiple easy ways to get to the actual workflow), and a Talk section to ask questions, comment on specific subjects (that’s the image you’re classifying) and generally hang out. You don’t need an account to participate, but if you have one you can also mark favorites, make collections of related images, and revisit subjects you’ve recently classified in each project. Your profile page also has a pie chart of your classifications to date, and a shortcut to projects you’ve recently worked on, both of which I’ve found super helpful!
The other big feature I love about Zooniverse is that you can pop in and out whenever. If you want to show up and binge Galaxy Zoo for an hour, you can do that! If you only have time for two classifications before lunch, you can also do that! There’s no obligation, just the Zooniverse at your fingertips for when it suits your fancy. And when it’s fun, satisfying and convenient… what’s not to love?
