Animation Throwdown General Deck Assembly Guide

Posted on May 2, 2018 by Peter

Animation Throwdown General Deck Assembly Guide

Still Biased and Definitely Daft

Author: Peter Kraatz, aka KinzuaKid
peterkraatz@cox.net
Twitter: @TheKinzuaKid
http://www.practicalpolymath.com

Updated December, 2020
Note: This update is by request to explain some of the probabilities as player decks get much larger than the optimal 25-card set.

Introduction

This is a general strategy guide for Animation Throwdown deck assembly. Since there are many resources at your disposal already I’m writing this guide in response to queries from my current guild to update gaps in general theory left out of the Rumble Strategy Guide. Thanks for the feedback, Robot High Council (again)! As usual, the effectiveness of any given tactic is up for debate and this is just what works for me, so take it all with a grain of salt.

Any casual reader will note I’ve repeated myself from the Rumble Guide, here. I’ve done this for consistency and because I wrote the words. I’ll do what I want with them. Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

A Systems Programming Interface

Posted on March 2, 2018 by Edward

I have the pleasure of working with a lot of very smart people who challenge me and help me grow every day. Recently we have been talking a lot about moving to a model where we have an API for our CTO organization rather than so many carefully hand crafted integrations. If a tool or solution we consume has five different patterns for integration we will happily use them all. It creates fragility and complicates our operators lives, not to mention it makes an upgrade of said solution arduous. The concept of interfacing rather than integrating has been around for more than thirty years and I dare say we are still trying to get good at it across all of IT. I posit that we need a Systems Programming Interface approach in the spirit of W. Richard Stevens and Stephan A. Rago’s Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment which was ubiquitous in the libraries of all my mentors early in my career. That book and the related series on Network Programming set out how to reliably plumb everything you needed to make Unix systems and their software hum efficiently. I differentiate between a System and Application Programming Interface because I believe one supports the other, the system focused on the environment we run high quality applications in.

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Posted in Future of IT | Tagged as a service, Future of IT, Infrastructure, ITaaS, ITSM, PaaS, service catalog | Leave a comment

DevOps for Ops

Posted on February 23, 2018 by Edward

A horse of a different color

We spend a lot of time focused on DevOps for Devs in the industry. A lot has been written about how we can make life better for developers through automation, Lean, Agile, Kanban, etc. etc. but it seems like there isn’t a ton of information out there written from the Operations perspective, or maybe I have just been incurious about it until recently. DevOps for a team or a tribe is pretty straightforward, there are a lot of resources available to help out from tooling to knowledge sharing, patterns for consumption and what have you. And that is true for both the developer and operations side of the equation. Certainly structured platforms like Cloud Foundry and Open Shift and container technologies are starting to make things better for operations as well, but they are really helpful again at the team or tribe level. Adopting DevOps at scale is really a horse of a different color.

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Posted in Private Cloud | Tagged as a service, Automation, Change, Cloud, Future of IT, IaaS, Infrastructure, ITaaS, ITSM, Private Cloud, process | Leave a comment

More Behavioral Guidance for the Newly Employed

Posted on January 30, 2018 by Peter

If you’re looking for another snarky take on common foibles our newly minted consultants show off like a peacock’s feathers, you’ll have to wait. That’s coming. The next one is going to be a rant, so I need to lay a foundation here with someone more professional than myself.

Scott Cameron is one of the Cloud Architects (along with the 7 other hats he wears) I work with and he’s helpfully prepared a few pieces I wish every fresh out of college worker would read. With that:

Seven E-mail Tips and Tricks
Don’t be fooled, these aren’t tips for using Outlook. These are tips to help avoid getting your sorry ass fired.

Do You Know When to Shut Up?
Scout’s honor, Scott had no idea I wrote this piece on the 3-Shut-Up Rule when he wrote his screed. Just read his whole article in your most annoying grandparent’s voice and you’ll get a good sense for how you’re ruining everything.

So You Want Computer Consultant Scott Cameron?
If I’m being honest, no. I don’t. You, however, do. This one should be mandatory reading for our job applicants and university outreach participants before jumping in with both feet to the consulting lifestyle. It’s more a bit on what makes a good consultant than an advertisement for Scott’s services (he’s already gainfully employed, thanks).

This should keep the HR folks and Resource Managers who troll PracticalPolymath for their latest talking points busy for a few weeks while I finish off my next epic whinge.

Posted in Communication, Consulting 101 | Leave a comment

A few of my favorite 2017 things . . .

Posted on December 31, 2017 by Edward

This has been a very interesting year in my household. It certainly seems to have flown by as well. I’ve been fortune enough to have discovered some really cool stuff this year, and they certainly show where my priority lies outside of the office and family. My wife was charitable enough to let me travel back home to Chicago to attend this year’s Axpona where I discovered what would become my favorite thing of this year, the Sony MDR-Z1R headphones. I’ve really enjoyed Axpona over the last few years, lots of incredible audio systems on display and a really welcoming community. This year the seminars were very disappointing compared to previous years, but they made up for it with more live music acts. One of my favorite things about Axpona is the Ear Gear Expo, a great collection of booths from the growing headphone community. I’ve gotten a lot more into headphones the last several years since my wife has trained my daughters to complain every time my system got above a whisper level. I wish I could find out how she bribed them. I took the move to Scotland as an opportunity to get rid of my two channel set up and refocus on headphones, and another system I’ll talk about in a bit. Continue reading →

Posted in Home Audio, Miscellaneous, Movies, Recreation | Tagged audio, audiophile, personal | Leave a comment

Animation Throwdown Rumble Strategy Guide

Posted on December 17, 2017 by Peter

Incredibly Biased and Probably Daft
Peter Kraatz, aka KinzuaKid
Last Updated December, 2017

Introduction

This is a strategy guide for Animation Throwdown Rumble Play. I wrote this guide with my current guild in mind. Thanks for the feedback, Robot High Council! Yes, there are zillions of videos and tons of strategy discussions on Reddit and Kongregate but I’m not a Redditor (FARKer here) and I hate watching people play games. I play them. I don’t spectate. Also, you could just play the game and learn all this yourself but that’s not helping or you wouldn’t be reading this. It’s way too long and complete garbage on several points, so take it all with a grain of salt.

Naturally, all game images below belong to the publisher and are included here for reference only. Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Animation Throwdown, KinzuaKid, rumble, skills, strategy | 3 Comments

Livestream (yes, again)

Posted on October 10, 2017 by Peter

Oct. 25, 2017 | 2 p.m. EDT | 11 a.m. AZ

This time I’m hoping the entire state doesn’t jump on the Internet simultaneously and shatter our data flow. No promises, though, because I’ll be sitting with Juan Orlandini and Irwin Teodoro. Unlike me, people like them.

We’ll be talking about Cloud, Workload Alignment, and the evolution of IT and infrastructure services. If you’re in the business, I’ll probably drop some jokes only insiders will get and nobody will appreciate. If you’re a family member, here’s your one chance to see what I look like this year.

Visit the link below to register:

https://www.datalink.com/Livestream-Cloud-Platform-Workload-Alignment

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KinzuaKid Does Science

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Peter

I heard recently there’s this eclipse thing coming on August 21 and while I’m going to be doing much the same as Randall Munroe’s character on the street (staring mouth agape at awesomeness) I’ll be pretending a bit at some actual science, too. We’ll be live streaming the view from our vantage point on YouTube, here. Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy and Space | Tagged astronomy, eclipse, general relativity, gravity, Linear Photonics, star light, sun | Leave a comment

The Message and the Medium

Posted on May 1, 2017 by Peter

edit: updated video link
edit: H/T to my brother, Paul Kraatz, for pointing to the one episode of The Office I had not seen for the video below.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for years now but it took the combined efforts of a thousand-person bureaucracy to shake it loose. That bureaucracy is the Oceanside Unified School District.

Now this isn’t a rant about the awful OUSD. On the contrary, they’re mostly nice folks who do a pretty decent job but they, like many other districts, are a horror show when it comes to communication media. So are you. This is why they’re the perfect example to trot out in the hope that you embrace a little self-improvement.

As parents of schoolchildren, the district needs to notify Mrs. Kid and me of many different goings on in the schools. For a time it was restricted to snail mail and phone calls home. The district soon discovered cell phones which led to calls and text messages, followed by e-mail, then Facebook, Twitter, and I think the last few bricks thrown through my window came from them. It’s hard to say with all the spelling errors on the threatening note but that was either the local gang or my son’s English teacher, probably the latter. Their motto: “if one communication channel is good, all of them are even better!”

They’re “Wuphfing” me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL1k7P-UR-4

Continue reading →

Posted in Communication, This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things | Tagged communication, school, spam, Woof | Leave a comment

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