Category: Uncategorized

  • Life since Livejournal

    We dropped off this journal after Greece in 2012, but kept travelling continuously until 2015. We started travelling with friends more often, and I guess I wasn’t as lonely and needing to share our experiences. But we still took pictures! And I’ll continue to post them to our Flickr stream now and then.

    So a quick (but by no means complete) recap:

    After Greece in 2012 we stayed with relatives in Scotland, then six months in Mexico (first the Sayulita, then Yucatan) where we released our game Incredipede. In 2013 we spent spring in Montreal and New York, lived on a remote island in Bocas del Toro, Panama, then spent several months in Buenos Aires. In 2014 we lived in Brazil, roadtripped around our native British Columbia for a few months, then wintered in Cape Town, South Africa. We ended our five year world tour with a stay in Bali, Indonesia.

    After our customary spring trip to GDC in San Francisco (which we missed only one year and regretted deeply), in 2015 we bought an apartment in Vancouver, and have been there ever since. Shortly after that I released my game Rebuild 3, then we dove into VR and released Fantastic Contraption with the Vive in early 2016.

    And now, except for the occasional month in Tokyo or elsewhere, we’re mostly sedentary. Our addition to bulky virtual reality systems is part of that, but also we’re just happy to stay in one place for awhile and to have a real home.

    Follow our continued adventures on Twitter: @colinnorthway and @sarah_northway, and on the Northway Games dev blog.

  • Solution to the BirdBrain Puzzle

    I posted a very hard puzzle here and challenged the Internet to solve it. It’s quite a hard puzzle and it took about a day from originally posting it for someone to solve it. That someone was Mark Ivey (@zovirl). I asked him to write a quick description of his solution and he did up a very nice little post which I thank him for. Here is Mark Ivey’s solution to my puzzle:

    The Solution to the BirdBrain Puzzle by Mark Ivey

    Overview: A down-and-left circuit moves the birds to the first & last yellow pellets. A decaying memory circuit bounces the birds up off the red ball. Since this loop decays over time the birds will go down again after clearing wall #2.
    Down-and-right circuit
    To bounce up, the birds have to hit the ball from the top. If they hit the side, they’ll bounce at the wrong angle.
    The right signal is slightly stronger than the down signal to make sure the birds get over the ball before hitting it.
    Decaying Memory Circuit
    Bouncing up requires reversing the ball signal. Keeping the birds moving up after they hit the ball requires a memory loop. When a bird hits the ball, the ball signal gets injected into the loop. The 2 neurons in the loop keep the signal alive even after the bird leaves the ball. Then the signal is reversed (repel from the ball instead of attract to it) and passed to the wings.
    Don’t want the birds to keep going up forever, just want them to go high enough to clear wall #2. This means the memory of hitting the ball has to decay. A sidetrip out through the 1/2 neuron does this. To keep the signal from decaying too quickly, more connections are added between the 2 memory neurons. This dilutes the effect of the 1/2.

     If the bounce signal has to fight against the down signal, the birds move too slowly. To prevent the bounce from having to fight the down signal like this, a bunch of parts of the bounce circuit send suppression signals to the down-and-left circuit.
    Tuning
    Once the birds are moving in a nice down-up-down motion, it took some tuning to get them to just barely clear wall #2 before going back down to the 3rd pill.
    Tuning #1: The memory decays slower if there are more connections between the 2 memory neurons (this dilutes the effect of the 1/2 signal). About 5 connections in each direction worked well.
    Tuning #2: The suppression lines are doubled in a few places to suppress the down signal even more.

  • BirdBrain Puzzle

    Hello Internet. I have a puzzle for you. It’s quite hard.

    In this puzzle you have to build the brain of a bird. The brain already has several Neurons, you need to connect them with some Axons.

    The puzzle is here: BirdBrain

    Don’t run off though! You need some instructions and I happen to have some hastily written instructions right here:

    Controls: Click on a Neuron (the grey disks), drag to a different Neuron and let the button go. This will make a wire between the two Neurons.

    Click on a wire to delete it.

    You want to make the stream of birds pass through each yellow “food”. If you get one dot then you’ve figured out how to play. If you get the second dot then you are clever indeed. The third one is genuinesly hard, I really doubt you’ll make it there so why stress about it?

    There are Three broad catagories of Neurons and Nine specific kinds.

    The Three catagories are:

    1. Input
    2. Processing
    3. Output

    These correspond to the top row, the two middle rows, and the bottom row of the puzzle. The top rows generate directional input, the middle rows can change that input, and the final row takes whatever is being fed into it and steers the bird in that direction.

    Here is a run-down of all the neuron types:

    This Neuron points towards the red baloon. But, and this is important, only if the bird is touching it. The bird is blind, it can’t see the baloon, it can only feel it.

     

    Up/Down/Left/Right: These Neurons point in one direction at all times no matter what. Try conecting one of these neurons to the final “motor neuron”.

     

    These are your basic normal Neurons. They average whatever input they get. If you pass them a down and a right you will get down-and-right out of it.

     

    This reverses whatever you pass in. If you pass it a down and a right you will get up-and-left out of it.

     

    Will average whatever input it gets and then multiply by two on the way out. If you pass it down and right you will get down-and-right-but-fast out.

     

    Will average whatever input it gets and then divide by two on the way out. If you pass it down and right you will get down-and-right-but-slow out.

     

    This is the birds wings. It will fly in whatever direction you like. If you pass it down and right then the bird will fly down and right.

     

    Wires: are used to connect Neurons. Information flows along the wires in the direction you draw them. If you draw from the Left Neuron to the Motor Neuron your birds will go left. If you drag from the Motor Neuron to the Left Neuron the bird will not move.

    Inhibiting Wires: These wires inhibit whatever they are connected to acoriding to the strength of the information passing along them. If you connect the Down Neuron to the Motor Neuron with a normal wire and then the Left Neuron to the Motor Neuron with an Inhibiting wire the bird will not move because the Motor Neuron is being inhibited with the strength of the Left Neuron.

    Loops: You can make loops.

    Overlapping Wires: You can place a wire between the same two Neurons as many times as you want going in either or both directions. There is no graphical hint to tell you how many wires are there.

    Special Case: Neurons average all the information they get except for the special case of zeros. If they get a zero they will simply ignore it. Since the birds can not see the Baloon when they start connecting the Balloon Neuron to anything will have no immediate effect because it is sending no information. Combining anything with no information results in no change, not a halving of the value.

    Good luck. You’re going to need it. (and yes, it is possible, here is a picture of my birds getting to the end)

    If you’d rather just mess about in a sandbox I have one of those here.

  • Kittehs


    Lost Cat
    Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

    We often make friends with stray dogs when we travel, because, well, there are a lot of them in the world. In Panagia, it’s cats. Cats on the rooftops, cats in the alleys, cats in the gutters caterwauling at dusk. They’re all quite skittish so I took it as a challenge to get one of them to trust me.

    I started feeding tiny bits of sausage once a day to a squirlish black and white cat with beautiful green eyes that just stare and stare into mine when I speak to her. The first day I only got her halfway up the steps. The second day she came to the front door and almost ate out of my hand. On the third day she lept to the deck, bolted across the floor and ran into the kitchen, earning herself much yelling and commotion, and the nickname “Houserunner”.

    Some days Houserunner brings another cat with her who I call “Little Brother” (but is more likely her sister or daughter). This one has the same beautiful eyes and inquisitive stare, and enjoys hiding in the “cat cave” underneath my seat on the deck.

    During our first week in Panagia we passed a very pregnant calico, but soon forgot her. Last week she reappeared with three kittens in tow, presumably now 3-4 weeks old. They moved in to a drainage hole in the house across the street, and we had a clear view from our deck of them frolicking in the bushes and clambering around the ruined building next door.

    This morning we came out to find only a single black kitten alone in front of their home. He sat there and mewed tiny mournful mews for hours. Where was mom? Where were brother and sister? It was heartbreaking, and made it hard to concentrate. If happiness is a kitten, then sadness is a lost kitten. Eventually there came an answering meow from down the road, and the little guy perked up and scrambled off in that direction.

    Several hours later we heard the same mewing and he returned. I brought him a saucer of milk and a nibblet of sausage, mostly to see if he was eating solid food. He went for the sausage, so that answered that. More mewing, then finally came that answering meow again and off he went. What’s going on? Is the little kitten just getting lost? Or is mom ditching him on purpose?

    Colin doesn’t like it when I feed strays. Not because they’ll become pests, though that’s part of it. He feels bad for how confused and lost they’ll be when we stop feeding them. Like they’ll get used to free food and forget how to forage for themselves, then after we go they’ll pine for that happy full feeling. I’m not sure if Colin’s right, but it sure is sad. *sniff*

    We love strays but for god’s sake people, spay and neuter your pets!

    Edit: But wait there’s moar! A young spotted mom (The Lynx) just arrived in the ruined house next door with a small army of kittens in tow. Houserunner and Little Bro are there too playing with the kittens. It’s a monstrous pile of adorable. How the hell are they going to feed them all??

    Edit #2: Lynx and Little Sister (definitely female) seem to be living as a family unit with at least 10 kittens. I didn’t know cats did this! They’re both nursing and don’t seem to know or care whose kittens are whose anymore. Today we watched them move their offspring up onto the hill, which took hours of back and forth and responding to the cries of kittens who got lost along the way (so that’s how that happens). Little Sis got fed up by the end and carried the stragglers up by the scruff of their necks.

  • Hiking around Thassos, Greece


    Back Home
    Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

    Every morning we wake to the sound of roosters crowing and the distant tinkle of goat bells, which Colin has dubbed the Thassos Orchestra. We work till midafternoon then go for a hike once the day starts to cool off. Almost from our door we can start on a dirt road that meanders up into the hills, where we might come across the afore-mentioned local musicians, grazing and wandering through the fields of flowers and scree, their bells jangling as they shyly trot under the pines to avoid us. They blend in well with the forest. Sometimes it sounds like the goats are so close, but you can’t see them.

    As it is with the bees. There must be 100 different kinds of flowers blooming in the hills. Honey is one of the local industries so there are bee boxes lining the roads, and at the height of the day you can hear the constant low drone of bees from our balcony. Last week while we were hiking, we were sure we heard a rushing river just ahead. The sound seemed to get quieter as we approached and the hum of bees got louder, until we reached a clearing filled with ferns and practically vibrating with the sound of bees… although eerily we still couldn’t see them. There are chapels all over the hillsides here so we dubbed that spot “Our Lady of the Buzzing Bees”. I’m pretty sure the bees imitated the river noise to lure us there, but I’m not sure why…

    Yesterday we headed up the network of seemingly unused but well maintained dirt roads to what we call “Spider Mountain”. Incredipede artist Thomas Shahan has a real love of jumping spiders, and apparently it’s contagious because Colin couldn’t take ten steps without bending down to wrangle another scurrying creature while I took photographs for identification.

    Thanks to this site we learned that the curious holes we found were burrows of the large wolf spider (also known as a ‘true’ tarantula) Geolycosa vultuosa. We poked a stick down one and were shocked when the hole’s owner grabbed the end and tugged it hard. We couldn’t lure him far enough out to get a decent look but dimly saw some large yellow mandibles and gleaning eyes, and I now have a very good reason to never put my finger down any hole in the ground, ever.

    We were also disturbed by the antlions which are horrible alien creatures like the sand worm from Return of the Jedi, a mouth with huge pincers waiting at the bottom of a sand funnel for ants to fall in. I fed them some of the fat buzzing flies that kept following us for I don’t know what reason. Sometimes nature is like a horror movie if you look close enough.

    And sometimes it’s cute.

    We finally made it to the beach last Friday when the weather hit 30 degrees. There’s a bus that goes three times a day so we had to time our trip carefully. First, we scrambled around the point and swam off the rocks, then lunch at a lovely restaurant (“Gatos”, the Greekest-looking one beside the water with ivy growing on the underside of the palapa roof), followed by an hours walk to the other end of the beach, swimming again in the shallows (much warmer than off the rocks), and exploring the towns of Skala Panagia and Skala Potamia. “Skala” (ladder) is a synonym for a harbor controlled by a town further up the mountain. Except that today those two towns aren’t exactly ports. We did see a collection of tiny two-man fishing boats, but mostly Golden Beach is all about the tourist trade.

    There must be enough hotel rooms to fit 2,000 tourists down there, but the place was a ghost town and we saw less than 20 other people. That didn’t stop restaurants and bars from setting up all their tables, and the beach was marred with hundreds of empty lawn chairs and umbrellas that I assume somebody had to set up every morning. I think this has as much to do with the time of year as the economy, since we saw the same thing when we were in Turkey a couple years ago. Back then we’d argued with one hotel manager that it was mid-June and 32 degrees, so why was the advertised swimming pool still empty? The manager insisted, “it’s the off season, nobody wants to swim until July” (but eventually did fill it for us).

    Colin and I are happy to visit places during the off season, even if we get the odd rainstorm or typhoon.