Hop Marjanneke

My Dutch Canadian toddler, who speaks mostly English, is starting to sing the Dutch nursery rhyme Hop Marjanneke. It's pretty amazing how long lasting nursery rhymes tend to be. This one is from the year 1800 or so, more than two centuries old, and mocks the French occupation force from Napoleon Bonaparte's time.

And now, more than two hundred years later, a little girl in Canada is singing it. The lament of using to have a prince, but now have to deal with the bald French (referring to their lack of wigs after the French revolution in 1789.)

Image depicts Napoleon's entrance into Amsterdam.

1978 - Brutal dictator steals the world cup.

In 1978 I saw my very first football match on television. I cannot remember whether it was in black and white or in colour, but it was a memorable experience for me as a little kid. Not in the least because my parents, always strict with bed-time, let me stay up way past my bed time. I understood that somehow, this football match was so important, my parents wanted me to see it.

It was the 1978 World Cup Final between Argentina (hosts) and the Netherlands. In the very last minute of the game, the Netherlands were oh so close to being crowned world champion. But the goal post was unforgiving. The conditions under the junta regime were atrocious. This also resonated on the field. From wikipedia: "During the game, the referees repeatedly ignored Argentine players running off side for up to 10 meters and catching the ball with their hands." The Dutch players feared for their lives, because of the hostile atmosphere in the stadium, and a military junta that demanded a win.

It will not bring back the victims from the regime, but: This Wednesday, the Netherlands can have their sporting revanche. It will be 36 years late, but it will taste so sweet. This time, General Videla will not be here to rig the results, Argentina. Hup! Holland, Hup!

Vaisahki

Someone threw a party in our street today, and 50,000 people showed up. We attended last year as well, the event took place very soon after we moved into our house. The weather was awesome, and there is free food everywhere. Xander and Amy got a photo op with Justin Trudeau.

My Toronto stock market adventure so far.

Three years ago I began my Toronto Stock market adventure. So it's a good time to reflect. There is some good news: I beat the TSX market index by quite a bit. The bad news is that in 3 yrs time, the index was overall just flat.

The big spike in portfolio value (blue) of feb 1 2012, was thanks to a takeover of Gennum by Semtech. The price of Gennum more than doubled that day.

A 13.8% return is modest for a 3yr investment, but it beats the lousy interest on saving accounts these days. I remember saving as a child in the Netherlands, and getting a hefty 10% annual interest from 'the Zilvervloot'. I also traded on NYSE and Nasdaq. Even though the US stocks were more profitable than my Canadian stock, I failed to match either NYSE or Nasdaq performance.

Anyway, my lessons learned so far:

• Got burned by Arise, a solar panel company. It went bankrupt soon after I bought it. Don't get suckered into green tech: they don't all have Tesla like stock performance. They typically falter.
• You need a lot of patience with irrational market sentiments. Why is AAPL still not valued properly? It's my biggest US holding, and I lost money on it.
• Take over bids tend to be good news, with an instant hike in stock price. It happened to me a lot. I think a lot of Canadian industries are consolidating.
• Often, the real money can be made on dividends, instead of stock price. It pays to concentrate on companies that pay their investors well.
• My biggest money maker was a US stock: Stratasys, which makes 3D printers. When I bought it, it was expensive, but still it tripled in value in a short period. Market leaders in brand new industries tend to do well. (I missed out on Tesla, but that would be in the same category.)

2013 totals

I have published some download statistics of The Little Crane That Could. Like 2012, the year 2013 was another blast.

Bitcoin, logarithmically

Some time ago, I purchased a bitcoin for a little under $300,- CAD. My reasoning went like this:

• There is a non-zero chance of bitcoin replacing USD as default currency. Let's put it at 1 in 1000.
• There is a hard limit of 21M bitcoins.
• If in 2030, the world uses bitcoins, then those 21M coins will represent the entire money supply of the world's default currency.
• My 1 bitcoin will represent 1/21Mth of the world's money in 2030, with a 1:1000 chance.
• The world money supply divided by 21M and then divided by 1000, is still worth a lot more than the $300,- I paid for it.

In addition, I've started mining the bitcoin as well, using an ASIC miner. The bitcoin price fluctuates wildly, and it's hard to make sense of it. However, I find that treating the price logarithmically helps a lot. You can actually make out a trend, when you use that. Here is the price up to dec 11, 2013.

A spin-off.

Please let me introduce to you, a new blog thelittleengineerthatcould.blogspot.ca. It is a spin off from this blog. I decided to do this, so that game development blogs and personal items would not be mixed together anymore. If you like following my indie game development efforts, hop on over! I look forward to reading your comments.

Irrational Investor

Because I've been fortunate with my app store ventures, I have some money to invest. I want to share with you the story behind my worst investment, so that others may learn from my mistakes. When it comes to investing, it is hard to remain rational. One of the psychological hurdles to take, is to let go of buy-price. You should be able to reassess your holding at any time, and sell below cost if necessary. If you can't you are 'anchored' and this will hurt you. Here is what happened to me when I first started investing on the Toronto Stock Exchange:

My instinct was telling me that solar energy would be a growth opportunity, so I sought out solar panel producers. I found these two on the Toronto Stock Exchange:

• Day4 Energy Inc. (DFE)
• ARISE Technologies Corporation. (APV)

So I studied them carefully: the earnings, the price, their debt, the news items on them. After this study I decided to go with Day4, as it had just got certified in an important market. So I made the online trade, worth $9000, using the online investment website of my broker (RBC). The thing is: I had typed in the wrong symbol. So there I was, holding $9000,- APV instead of $9000,- DFE.

If I had been rational, I would have sold the APV and bought the DFE. However, I really did not like to spend two more transaction fees of $9.95 each. Psychologically, I was not prepared to take my $20,- loss on a stupid mistake, so I let it be. Hopefully, APV would see some nice yield. In reality, APV was bankrupt within a year, and I lost my entire $9000,- investment in 'green technology.'

I can laugh about it now, but darn, did I feel like a fool. Trying to penny pinch and save $20,- transaction costs, ending up losing my $9000,- principle. Talk about being anchored... Anyway, I still hope that for the rest of my holdings, all I have to do is wait long enough and everything will be in the plus. I'm a long term investor, and see much wisdom in the ideas of Warren Buffet. Currently, my largest holding is AAPL, which currently yielded -24% for me (not counting dividend.) I'm pretty confident that within a 5 years it will be the shooting star it once was, so I don't plan on selling before that one hits the cool $1000,- milestone (or $100,- when the stock finally splits 1:10 or so.)

Quadratic Equations, solving 8 in one go.

Today I found out that modern intel CPUs can do 256 bit wide SIMD. This is possible with the Advanced Vector Extensions, or AVX. Operating on 8 floats at the same time is even better than what the PS3 Cell processor was capable of. So I wrote this neat little function that can solve 8 quadratic equations in a single go, without branching. It should come in handy when implementing a Fast Marching Method to implement Continuum Crowds. For SIGGRAPH 2008, some people at ATI implemented this on the GPU for their amazing Froblins Demo.

/*
 * solve aX^2 + bX + c = 0
 * solves 8 instances at the same time, using AVX SIMD without any branching to avoid stalls.
 * returns two solutions per equation in root0 and root1.
 * returns FLT_UNDF if there is no solution due to discriminant being negative.
 */
static const __m256 zero8 = _mm256_set_ps( 0, 0, 0, 0,  0, 0, 0, 0 );
static const __m256 undf8 = _mm256_set_ps( FLT_UNDF, FLT_UNDF, FLT_UNDF, FLT_UNDF, FLT_UNDF, FLT_UNDF, FLT_UNDF, FLT_UNDF );
static const __m256 four8 = _mm256_set_ps( 4, 4, 4, 4,  4, 4, 4, 4 );
inline void evaluate_quadratic8( __m256 a, __m256 b, __m256 c, __m256& root0, __m256& root1 )
{
 __m256 minb   = _mm256_sub_ps( zero8, b ); // -b
 __m256 bb     = _mm256_mul_ps( b, b );  // b*b
 __m256 foura  = _mm256_mul_ps( four8, a ); // 4*a
 __m256 fourac = _mm256_mul_ps( foura, c ); // 4*a*c
 __m256 det    = _mm256_sub_ps( bb, fourac ); // b*b - 4*a*c
 __m256 twoa   = _mm256_add_ps( a, a );  // 2*a

 __m256 dvalid = _mm256_cmp_ps( fourac, bb, _CMP_LE_OS );
 __m256 sr     = _mm256_sqrt_ps( det );
 root0 = _mm256_add_ps( minb, sr );
 root1 = _mm256_sub_ps( minb, sr );
 root0 = _mm256_div_ps( root0, twoa );
 root1 = _mm256_div_ps( root1, twoa );

 root0 = _mm256_blendv_ps( undf8, root0, dvalid );
 root1 = _mm256_blendv_ps( undf8, root1, dvalid );
}

2012 and 2013 goals.

So, this post is verbatim from an old indiegamer.com forum posting. On this old forum, it was tradition to set goals for the year, share them with the board community, and evaluate afterwards. indiegamer.com is down today, and I suspect it may be gone forever now. Readership was dwindling, spam was a plague, so I think it will be dead, if not now, soon. So let's preserve my goals here on my own blog.

The goals I set for 2012:

• Add support for this awesome input device to the little crane that could for MacOSX.
  SUCCESS
  
• Maintain my 2011 income (had a very good year).
  BIGGER SUCCESS
  
• Release my first Android Game.
  SUCCESS
  
• Release an update for Hover Biker.
  SUCCESS
  
• New level for the little crane that could iOS version.
  SUCCESS
  
• Port the little crane that could to Android.
  SUCCESS
  
• Attend GDC.
  SUCCESS
  

It is amazing, but I hit all my goals. Maybe it is true what they say about: writing down goals make them come true. Although I did cheat a tiny bit: 'Port Little Crane to Android' and 'Publish Android Game' were originally intended to be separate games, but meh.

For 2013 I will:

• Publish an OUYA game.
  
• Hit 30K OUYA downloads.
  
• Hit 10M downloads (cumulative over all platforms, all years) for Little Crane That Could.
  
• Maintain 2012 income.
  
• Reach 750 followers on Twitter.
  
• Publish my first multiplayer game.
  

Ethics, not octane

I wonder what would happen if we stopped selecting Octane Numbers at the gas pump. Instead, we pay a premium for fuel that is guaranteed not to fund oppressive regimes. Maybe I am naive, but I think it could solve so many problems. That is why I built the ethics-not-octane website. This could solve so many problems.

Mad Carpentry Skillz

I inherited my grandfather's carpentry skills, it seems. With a little coaching from my father I managed to build this mean looking stainless steel kitchen in my basement. The parts come mainly from IKEA supplemented with a few Home Depot parts. Water, drainage and vents are self installed as well. If you want to build one like this yourself, look into IKEA's AKURUM line with RUBRIK stainless steel finishing. It is quite time consuming, and I now know why kitchen installs are so expensive. It is simply a whole lot of work. The IKEA parts are quite clever though, and make such a project doable for a handy amateur. A big thanks to my father for all the coaching.

25 releases in 26 months.

I think I can rightfully call myself a game developer dedicated to his creation. The Little Crane That Could saw 25 releases in just 26 months. Each release making it a better game. (Except for the 4.4.1 version which made the game crash upon launch. Argh!) I can only put the blame on myself for that and a little bit on Apple, who just for that particular release, decided not to test my update. (It got approved immediately after going into state 'in review'). And I did not even count the Android, Raspberry Pi and OUYA releases here.

I clearly remember the first release when frankly, it was an unfinished product. I launched with too few levels, without sound, with penetrating music that could not be switched off and other shortcomings. Still it managed to be a hit from week 1. Not day 1, as I also clearly remember my first sales report. I was horrified to find that the game had managed to sell one single copy. At that point I had given up hope, and decided to do contracting jobs from now on, for other people's apps. However, the next days, sales increased 10 fold every day, hitting a high of 6000 sales in a single day. The game still brings in good money, so that is why the updates keep coming. Today I submitted version 5.07 for review by Apple. I hope they test launch it this time before approving.

Trailer for Buggy Bang! Bang!

My upcoming title 'Buggy Bang! Bang!' is nearing completion. Therefore, I have created this promotional video with a great soundtrack to give it a nice epic feeling.

EDIT - Now available on iTunes.

Googling "Little Crane"

Since january 2011, the release date of The Little Crane That Could, people have been googling the term, mainly in the UK and the US. The big spike of dec 2012 coincides with the Android release.

False sense of security

So my new house came with Weiser Smart Key locks for the back, garage and basement doors. One morning, I could no longer open my garage. There was no way to get to my car to pickup my little monkey from day care. My builder is a great guy, so was on site with his installer in 15 minutes. They helped me get in by drilling out the lock. The next day, another guy came in and put in a replacement Weiser deadbolt lock. And what do you know, 10 minutes after he left, I discovered the same thing had happened, with a different lock, different set of keys.

At this time, I had lost all confidence in Weiser locks, and decided to replace them all. I got ANSI Grade 1 fixed key deadbolts from Schlage, and installed those on all doors that previously had that Weiser crap on them. They are robust, super smooth, and rated top grade for commercial use. My advice: never go with those 'programmable' locks known as Smart Key or SecureKey. See the photo above of all the useless crappy locks I removed from my house. Professionals rate the Weiser Smart Key of the same caliber as that lock that could be opened with a Bic pen. See this video on how to open any Weiser Smart Key lock in a few seconds.

So to sum up: Never get a programmable key, especially not the crap from Weiser that will lock you out at random. Instead get a lock that is not programmable, and rated ANSI Grade 1, for instance, this one from Schlage.