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Star shooter Vijay Kumar studies law during COVID-19 lockdown
Locked down in a training college near Palampur, Olympic silver medallist shooter Vijay Kumar has started learning law online as part of his training for the DSP post he holds in Himachal Pradesh Police. Kumar, who won silver in the 25m rapid fire pistol event in 2012 Olympics, also needed to undergo physical training but that has been postponed in the wake of the nationwide lockdown enforced to contain the spread of COVID-19 pandemic.
"I have stopped my physical training but still taking online law classes. Physical training is not possible at the moment as we have to maintain social distancing. I an confined to the training college in Daroh. There is no connection with the outside world," the 34-year-old told PTI Bhasha. Kumar, however, said getting the daily essentials in the times of crisis is not an issue for him.
"There are people who are ensuring that essentials reach us in time," said the Hamirpur-resident, who was in the Indian Army for 15 years. Kumar urged people to follow government guidelines on lockdown. "I am amazed that some of the people are still not practising social distancing. The police is working round the clock to ensure lockdown guidelines are followed but some people are still not paying attention. It is the only way you can defeat this virus," he added. The global death toll from the pandemic has crossed one lakh.
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The world wishes to investigate the role of a seemingly compliant WHO and allegations that insufficient or inaccurate data originating from China failed to alert the world on the intensity of the dangers from COVID-19.... [Read More]
Stars in the Milky Way's centre often get dangerously close together
About 80 per cent of stars in the Milky Way’s central bulge have relatively close encounters with another star, which can fling off any planets orbiting them
The sun is too quiet, which may mean dangerous solar storms in future
Stars that are similar to the sun in every way we can measure are mostly more active than the sun, which hints that the sun’s activity may ramp up someday, risking solar eruptions
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Start with cinematic dreams and stellar ambitions, and what do you get from there? For Laura Lam, you get Goldilocks, her new novel. She’s here to tell you how it all came together. LAURA LAM: I love astronaut films. Gravity. Interstellar. The Martian. Armageddon. Ad Astra. The Mars TV show on Netflix that’s OK, not […]
Starcom: Nexus, and What It’s Like to Live with an Indie Game Developer
Today Kevin’s game, Starcom: Nexus, releases in Early Access on Steam. It’s a thing of beauty, and also a lot of fun. If you like games that take you into outer space where you get to explore mysterious worlds, build a powerful ship, and explode bad guys, you should buy it, and play it, and let your gamer friends know about it. Yes, I’m biased, but reviewers and streamers - who are not his spouse - also love it :o). (FYI those last two links go to youtube streaming vids.)
***
Conversation at the dinner table:
Kevin: How was your day?
Me: Okay, I guess. I still can’t figure out how to get this girl to accidentally set her house on fire, then cause an explosion and get stuck in a window grille.
Kevin: I believe in you.
Me: Thank you. How was your day?
Kevin: Okay. When my enemy ships get within a certain distance of each other, they spontaneously explode.
Me: Oh!
Kevin: It’s not supposed to happen. It’s a bug.
Me: Oh.
Kevin: I can’t figure it out.
Me: I believe in you!
***
There are a lot of similarities between the work Kevin and I do. We both create complicated worlds with characters and plots. We’re both entertainers.
Meet your commander.
We have some processes in common: for example, we both study the books/games we love, then try to learn from them. We both think about the things we don’t like in other books/games, then try to come up with alternatives we prefer. We both know how to wear the creator hat; then switch to the reader/gamer hat, reading/playing our own project with a critical eye; then go back to the creator hat to fix what isn’t working. We’re both extremely familiar with the phenomenon wherein you change one little thing, then a ripple effect passes through the entire work, complicating/breaking things in ways you didn’t anticipate.
Meet the Ulooquo, an underwater alien race.
We can also get similarly overwhelmed by our own projects. I’ve talked a lot on the blog about how a book has many parts, and writing a book involves many jobs. Well, a game has SO many parts. It has music and art, visual effects, numerous interfaces, plot and character, mysteries and rewards. It must be able to support and absorb the choices of individual gamers, over which the creator has no control. It has SO many (literally) moving parts!
We also both work by ourselves for years on self-directed projects… then put our creations out into the world, hoping they’ll find the people who will love them.
These similarities are deep. They help us to understand each other’s frustrations and joys, and support each other meaningfully. This is awesome. However, I want to talk a little bit about the differences, which are many.
For example, in my writing career, I have an agent. She connects me to an editor who helps me craft the right words. Then, my editor works with my publisher to create a beautiful physical book, publicize and market that book, and sell that book for me.
An indie game developer, on the other hand, does everything himself, in an extremely saturated market with a lot of roadblocks. He can hire other people to help. Kevin hired a composer and an artist, to help him with his music and his characters (like the Commander and the Ulooquo above). He hired a marketing consultant to do a few things too. But he worked closely with those people, because he knew exactly what he wanted. And everything else has been the work of his own hands. He’s done SO much marketing and publicity work on his own that’s made me appreciate my own marketing and publicity departments even more than I did before. Self-promotion in a saturated market is really, really hard. It’s also stressful for a guy who happens to be humble and was raised with the good-old New England ethos of not bragging about himself :o).
Here’s another big difference: Kevin can release his game while it’s still in production, then use the feedback from early players to shape it and make it better. He can write code into the game that allows him to see how long players play; where they decide to drop out of the game; which options are being chosen more often than others. (He receives this information anonymously, in case you’re starting to worry that he can actually tell what you’re doing inside his game!) As a writer, I definitely don’t know where someone decides to abandon my book. Nor do I want to know, because once people are reading my book, it’s final! If everyone is bailing at a certain point, there’s nothing I can do about it. The words in my book are not going to change. Kevin’s game is more of a living, growing creature, even after it releases, and based on player reactions.
Another big difference is that while I am a wordsmith, Kevin is a programmer. A lot of the time, when I step into his office, he’s working with programming language on his many screens, and I don’t understand the smallest bit of it. My readers read my actual words. His gamers play a game built on a framework of programming that looks and feels very different from the actual game. He also works with a lot of complicated software (like, for 3D modeling) and does a lot of math. He uses trigonometry to [I just asked him to explain it and he said something about spaceships shooting at each other, vectors, and cosines. ???]. I can come home and tell him practically everything I struggled with at work that day. A lot of what he does is too technical for me to understand—though he is really good at creating analogies and explaining things to me when I ask (and when I'm not rushing to finish a blog post!).
Another difference is that he is a visual artist. For example, he created Entarq's Citadel below, which is one of the worlds his gamers get to explore.
Here's another.
Another difference: I can do my work anywhere. All I need is my notebook and a pen. Kevin needs his fancy computer and his big monitors. So he works from home. Home office and self-employed means he’s working most of the time. Most mornings, he’s working by the time I get out of bed. By the time I leave for my office, he’s put hours in. I come home and he’s making me dinner; after dinner, he works for a few more hours. I go away on trips without him; he works while I’m gone! I always thought I worked really hard. I have a new standard now.
And now his work has created this beautiful, fun game that’s getting really positive attention from gamers and streamers :o). Today, you can buy it in Early Access, and become one of the players who contributes to what it will ultimately become.
And that's my little explanation of what it's like to live with an indie game developer. Check out the links if you’re interested! The trailer is below.
Instagram announces new features for small businesses including gift cards, food orders and fundraisers
Starting Wednesday in the U.S. and Canada, Instagram users can tap on a gift card or food order to make a purchase through a company's site. Fundraisers created by a business or its supporter open on Facebook.
Starbucks' latte levy is being used to boost cup recycling rates
£1 million in grants will be divided among groups wanting to improve recycling facilities. But why should people have to compete for help in dealing with Starbucks' own trash?
Startup lets you swap unused vacation days for cash, flights or hotel
There's an "epidemic" of unused vacation days in the United States. This startup wants participating companies' employees to trade them in for plan contributions, or booking flights and hotel accommodations.
Startup is using heat generated from Bitcoin mining to grow food and fish
Merging energy-intensive Bitcoin mining with aquaculture, this project is experimenting with how technology might be used to develop better food systems.
Startup Takes Google Street View Approach to Home Energy Audits
What if the Google Street View car took thermal energy scans of all the country's buildings and then built a database of building energy efficiency information? That's the concept behind startup company Essess's approach to home energy audits.
Star of Tesla-smearing Top Gear is now buying a BMW i3
In a funny twist, one of the stars of an extremely popular car show (Top Gear) whose script smeared Tesla is now going electric. James May is getting a BMW i3.
Start a Sea Change This Weekend with the Ocean Conservancy
No plans this weekend? Why not Start a Sea Change? Planet Green’s non-profit partner, the Ocean Conservancy, hosts their 23rd annual International Coastal Cleanup
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Co-Chairs of the Childhood Cancer Caucus, Reps. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Jackie Speier (D-CA), Mike Kelly (R-PA), and G. K. Butterfield (D-NC), applaud the passage of the Senate companion to their bill – S. 292, the Childhood Cancer STAR Act.
The STAR Act passed the House today by a unanimous vote. It addresses the four major concerns facing the pediatric cancer community: Survivorship, Treatment, Access, and Research, and will elevate and prioritize the fight against childhood cancer at the National Institute of Health (NIH).
The members released the following joint statement:
"Today was a long anticipated day for the pediatric cancer community, and one to be celebrated. This bill is the most comprehensive childhood cancer bill to ever pass Congress and will finally head to the president’s desk to be signed into law. Childhood cancer remains one of the deadliest killers of our kids and we as a Congress, and a nation, must say, ‘Enough is enough.’ As co-chairs of the Childhood Cancer Caucus, we would like to thank all those who made this possible, including the Alliance for Childhood Cancer and theentire childhood cancer advocacy community.”
Click here to watch McCaul’s floor remarks ahead of the House passage of the STAR Act.
Starr County, Texas, Sheriff’s Deputy Arrested and Detained on Bribery, Extortion and Drug Charges
A Deputy Sheriff for the Starr County, Texas, Sherriff’s Office has been ordered detained by a federal magistrate judge in the Southern District of Texas on charges of conspiracy, federal programs bribery, extortion and drug possession with intent to distribute.
The brutal killing of Ahmaud Arbery is gut-wrenching and outrageous. And, the virus is causing many to choose between financial and physical health. So we gotta ask ...
StarMobile was established in 2012 and is based at Technology Square in the Midtown area of Atlanta, Georgia, USA, a technology community that is recognized as a national, if not global, locus for mobility technology.
