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September 20 Bubble Blaster - an Analogy for Planning Ahead, ValueI have downtime. It's uncommon but it happens. Most people who know me know that I like to play casual games in my scant spare time.
I found a neat new one called Bubble Blaster. Why do you care? Well, there's a lesson in this game. This is the first bubble popping game I've found that has a built-in opponent and that changes all of the foces.
In this game, you are working toward a goal (highest score) and the opponent is working toward that same goal. You and your opponent have the option to do a number of things:
There are two lessons to be learned from this game:
Both of these lessons also depend on the notion of position. Your position is constantly changing as a result of another actor working it its own self interest. This can be thought of a micro simulation of market forces. On Value This game has some very interesting principles that make it necessary to work on value rather than taking a large number of essentially blind actions some of which yield value. Every ball you fire has a cost. Like programming, there is a small cost to firing each ball and, also like software development, each action carries with it the risk of changing your position for the positive or the negative. The amount of impact that each shot has on your position and your score can vary greatly. Consequently, I've found that option number 3 (hold your fire) is more valuable than originally would have seemed to be the case. By firing selectively, I am biasing the impact that each shot has on my score and/or position toward the positive. This is just like product development. Only developing those features you need yields far greater profitability than blindly developing everything you can think of. On Prescience Many of you probably also know that I have a product called GuideWire. I and many others use this product to help me plan my shots when playing this kind of game. One of the features of this tool is that it gives you the ability to predict how a ball will bounce off of a wall, as shown in the picture below...  In slow-paced games, such as Bubble Spinner, it is advantageous to try and plan long shots that ricochet off of several surfaces to capture big blocks of value with a minimum number of shots.
While it is important to conserve shots in Bubble Blaster, it is also important to act quickly. Even more important is to make sure that your shots go where you planned for them to go. ...but how to you make that happen?
The biggest risk to a shot is the time between when you shoot and when the ball strikes its target. Why? Because your opponent can take a shot while your ball is in transit, changing your position after you've committed.
In the higher levels - where the pace is fast and the opponent takes well aimed shot - this makes bouncing the ball several times all but useless. There are a few times, of course, where you might take advantage of your circumstances; for instance, if your opponent is stunned, and there is something on the opposite side of the playing surface of great value, you might take the shot.
Most of the time, you want to take the closest shots - the ones that have some value and are most likely to be completed before your opponent can change the board. If you apply this strategy: wait for low-risk shots for which the value outweighs the cost, you can quickly obtain a large lead against your opponent.
This is an analogy for product development, where the biggest risk is work in progress...
Wait for the right shot - the right feature. In your down time, control your position - keep quality high and monitor your customers' needs. Avoid longshots - don't create months-long plans and then commit to them. September 12 Safety Glasses A lightbulb fell apart, today. It was the weirdest thing I'd seen. My wife was trying to change it and, the moment she touched the bulb, it snapped at the neck and fell into her hand.
So getting the stub out of the light socket was going to be a delicate operation. There are a lot of things about it that sucked but, the worst part was having to look, basically, straight up at a bunch of thin, jagged glass as I applied torque to it.
I am not handy. I do not own safety goggles.
Fortunately, the can-do attitude prevailed over a lack of equipment. If you need a lightweight set of safety glasses - one that will deflect tiny fragments of glass from a lightbulb and not much more - you can fashion it from an empty tissue box and some Scotch tape. Just cut the bottom of the box out, enough to cover your nose and eyes at least, and use the Scotch tape to seal the slit through which the tissue is usually dispensed.
Here is what this awesome device looks like in action:
 Disclaimer: Don't do this under any circumstances. September 07 Disappointment 9The short verdict on "District 9:" Watch "Enemy Mine." "District 9" wasn't the most boring thing I've ever seen but that's not a very high bar to clear. After all, I've seen "500 Days of Summer." The thing that pisses me off most about this movie is that it was grossly misrepresented in its trailers. Don't be fooled: the interrogation scene in the trailers has nothing to do with the movie. "District 9" is nothing more than an action film with decent special effects. The "Prawns" were cute, though. Especially the juveniles. |
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