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Subject: 
Re: I dont want to be a "steve"
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto
Date: 
Wed, 14 Jan 2004 21:22:09 GMT
Viewed: 
480 times
  
In lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto, David Koudys wrote:
I was thinking about ~YOUR~ marble game, and was wondering about all the
ways to be a dink.

-if I grabbed my opponents marbles and dumped them outside the box,
would calum say i was a dink?

I'll give you my two demonstrated dink worthy situations so far:

-Entering in a Lego sticker as a sumo competitor (JeffE)
-Battery box thing on PipeRacers (Steve)

I've been thinking hard about dinkness, and it's a vague accusation.  Make hard
and fast rules about what constitutes a dink, and the dink will route around,
using the dinkness rules against you.

Dinkness (a far tamer word that I would choose to use, because it undermines the
integrity of the group to be a "dink", so I would be much harsher in my choice
of terminology) I think is a combination of factors:

a) Looking for exploits that are against the general "spirit" of the game,
primarily to be a smart-alec.  If the game was Monkey Bars and the spirit was to
make something that swung from bar to bar, then a really flat tank that drove
over the tops of the bars is being a dink.

Contrast this with being novel--in this case, Trevyn's end to endcap robot I
thinks is novel.  More on being novel in a second...

b) Not doing the task of the game, but just being mean.  Ie, you have a marble
sorting game and you don't do anything with marbles, but just pound the crap out
of another player.

c) Entering in something you know will be disqualified, just to be a dork.
Trying to prove a point that doesn't need proving.

d) Poking at the rules for the sake of poking.

e) Commenting when you have no intention of participating.  I can think of a few
people who chime in here that shouldn't be because they have no intention of
ever coming up to play.

f) Outright cheating.  Example would be...I dunno.  We haven't had one yet.  I
know: Hiding a 486 class SBC in an RCX for Connect Four.

g) Anything that makes someone kinda squidgy, uncomfortable.  I'll give you an
example.  Chris and I disagree if Rob's Hexagone is being dinky.  Chris thinks
it is, because it doesn't look like a monkey.  But if the spirit is something
that can swing the mass from one bar to another, then I think it's a great
solution and extremely well executed one at that.  So I think Rob is novel,
Chris borders on dinky.

-Some combination of above or impression that you perpetrate these behaviours,
even if you don't enter them, is being a dink in my book.  Posting a message
like this?  Chris, you're being a dink. :)

-Being a dink is like "business casual".  You know it when you see it, though
even then people seem to have differing opinions of what business casual is.  My
concept of what business casual is is extremely different than what people who
work in say, banking or consulting is.

-Dinkness is a scale.  Someone once said there's a fine line between genius and
insanity, and a fine line between arrogance and brilliance.  It's the same with
being novel and a dink.

Maybe I'll say, novel is anything that makes people say "Wow, that's cool".
Dinkiness is anything that makes people groan and say "Wow, what a dork".

Another question I've wondered about is what is novel.  Steve's little right
turn maze thing at BrickFest was pretty novel.  Iain's delta picker?  Novel.
Matt Jetleb's "moving the ProjectX board, not the picker arm thing" was novel.

- what if I entered some kind of RAMP that made other robots drive over
the edge of the box, would that be steve like?

I always thought that one was a different idea and an interesting one.  That
said, I've always thought most of the Chris Magno robots were novel, if not well
done.

Ahh yes, all these things have already been done in an rtl marble sorting
competition...

Yeah, Dave, but are they right?  I've called people out for being a dink, but I
don't want to be unfair about calling someone a dink.

Now in the competition on the 31st, if someone shows up with a 'bot that fits
within an 8 inch cube at the start of the competition, but can do these things
listed, then that's what they can do and they will not be disqualified nor
thought of as a sink by me.

Removing marbles from the field is mechanically difficult. (JeffE) And similar
in strategy in collecting opponents blocks from all of the field during
Maxwell's Demons and waiting to the end of the game to dump them all on the
other side.  (DaveK) Also similar to digging out all the bad blocks and driving
them over to the other side (Rob/Michael).

The ramp idea I dunno.  The early ramp didn't sort.  But it's a different
approach to the contest.  If the contest is the struggle to maintain a ratio of
winning and losing marbles, then yeah, it's doing the spirit of the game.  If
the contest is SORTING marbles, then, it's kinda dinky, because it doesn't sort
them.

For the record, I always thought the ramp was novel, as was the Cinderblock.

Calum



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: I dont want to be a "steve"
 
(...) Actually (Calum's not going to like this) I think that was a novel approach. Knowing that it's almost impossible for that 'entry' to cause an opponent to leave the sumo ring (unless it gets tangled in the opponent's sensors), that means the (...) (21 years ago, 15-Jan-04, to lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: I dont want to be a "steve"
 
(...) Lets see if I can recollect something... Hmmmm... (stokes chin thoughtfully...) There was Cinderblock... There was Chris ramp 'bot... Ahh yes, all these things have already been done in an rtl marble sorting competition... (and I missed 'em (...) (21 years ago, 14-Jan-04, to lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto)

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