Liars Dice

Thanks to the Pirates of the Caribbean I’ve been introduced to this game that uses dice and a wager component, with the movie using “years of service” as it was the only thing the pirates aboard the Flying Dutchmen had as currency. As a young 20-something I used to Play 7’s and 11’s, where if you rolled 7, 11, or a pair you’d get to tell someone to drink. A simple game that I don’t want to pass to my youth just yet, and I feel a simple gambling game is better to pass along.

Liars dice is easy:

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Learning Docker: Take 1

It was time. I’ve been waiting for enough time to learn Docker and begin to get familiar with it. I’ve heard of it, seen it in action, and thought it was the coolest thing in the world and I had to learn it. I decided to take the dive off the actual Docker ship and descend into the depths.

So, I found a YouTube video from the Docker YouTube video channel (link: https://youtu.be/iqqDU2crIEQ). Albeit it provided me some terminology and knowledge, it didn’t really tell me everything I wanted to know, like some under-the-core or how docker did the docker thing. I learned how to build, ps, port forward, docker hub, and a Dockerfile, but then they went to docker-compose and I got lost.

So, after sitting on that video and registering all the information I decided to set a goal: Load minecraft in a docker container. This shouldn’t be difficult, as it requires java, some source files, and that should be simple.

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Sethbling, Sethbling, wherefore art thou Mario

This has been quite an interesting series of Youtube videos. Allow me to explain:

It started off with a Fark article lovingly entitled Guy creates an artificial intelligence that learns how to play and beat a Super Mario Bros. level, of which the guy was the one and only Sethbling. Sethbling has been an amazing staple in the Minecraft community, and previously unknown to me is also a Super Mario Brothers speed runner.

He explains MarI/O (Mar + I/O, for those keeping up), in which he uses an emulator, some LUA, and a method of artificial intelligence to play and finish the first level of Super Mario Brothers.

The actual article from the University of Texas and the subsequently linked Wikipedia Pages (NeuroevolutionEvolutionary Algorithm, and Artificial Neural Network) are excellent readings.

This led me to the Credits Warp method. For speed runners, their goal is to finish the game as soon as possible, and with the Credits Warp this method is now the fastest.

The whole “Credits Warp” got me thinking about how this was actually done, so I found an amazing explanatory video on this specifically.

Rewriting a SNES using the console controller sounded amazing, and led to the next video on the list from tasvideos (the explanation) and the tasvideo where arbitrary code was executed for an amazing result (Starts at 32:00):

So, now i’m chilling with an amazing TAS execution of Super Mario World being fully run, and it’s pretty cool to see how people could just let computers do their thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Y2voAvVz4