Back from GDC, what would Benjamin Franklin think?

I'm back from GDC and I figured I better make a post or I will just forget everything that happened. Not that a whole lot happened anyway, but I still want a record of the event.

Let's see..how far back do I go? Last Sunday Troy DeMolay chapter held our regular meeting; and we certainly had a lot of business to discuss. We set out our upcoming plans which included a pancake breakfast fundraiser, a service project with the Shriner's children hospital, a talent competition as a fundraising opportunity, an upcoming movie night, our day of devotion at St. Cletus church, our fun day at the City Museum, our special ritual practice day at Wentzville Lodge, the Shrine Circus, a Rainbow Girls Dance, and conferring the entire initiatory and DeMolay degrees on our own.

Wow, that's a lot of stuff! I spent many hours working on the newsletter, but I cannot provide a link here until I remove all of the personal information from the document.

On Monday I flew to San Francisco. I was offered the opportunity to upgrade to First Class for the low-low price of only $180; so I did. Since it was a direct 4 1/2 hour flight, it seemed well worth it. I watched the movie 'The Departed' on my Archos 604 along the way. What a fantastic film!

Monday evening my friend John Oberschelp picked me up at the airport and we went to his home. John has recently set up a DLP projector in his living room, connected to a personal computer, as their main source for video entertainment. I showed some funny video clips and got a few laughs out of the boys. A few beers, nice conversation with John and I was off to bed.

The next day I took the Muni to the convention center. I was dressed up in my full suit and tie and didn't think anything of it when I had my normal Freemason pins attached to my lapel. However, this was just inviting a problem in San Francisco; especially on the Muni. This provided enough incentive that two passengers felt free to strike up a conversation. I didn't have much to do for the next thirty minutes but nod my head and pray to myself they would simply stop. I had nowhere to go, so I just had to absorb the entire verbal onslaught. They were heading on their way to talk on some local radio show about whatever their crazy beliefs are. The guy wasn't that bad, just sort of your normal activist type, but his wife was way off the deep end. In her case she was ready to tell me every personal detail of her life since birth without my prompting. To call this TMI would be an understatement.

Suddenly taxi-cabs didn't seem so expensive after all.

I arrived at Moscone and thought I should at least go see a talk. I did sit in on one for a few minutes but I suddenly felt like I was back on the train again. The speaker was going on and on in exacting detail about certain programming techniques I felt were largely obvious and didn't require that much explanatory material. On my way out I realized I had ducked into a 'tutorial' session and I suddenly understood why that talk was so basic. Those few minutes were the only time I spent in any session the entire week, not counting my own.

This was basically the theme of the whole week. I spent almost all of the day working on my presentation; either on the slides, the text, or the videos. I finally made my final finishing touches to my presentation at 1pm on Friday and then I printed them out. When I got into my room, thinking everything was perfect and ready, I pulled out my printout only to realize I only had the first half of my talk! The laser printer in the speaker ready room had run out of paper and I was in too much of a rush to notice it hadn't printed everything. So, here I was a few minutes before my talk was supposed to begin and I needed my spoken presentation printed out for reference. I opened up the bottom of the laser printer and there were a few sheets of legal sized paper and I managed to get my text printed out just in time while other very anxious people waited behind me. On a final note on this topic is an observation that the Speaker Ready Room was pretty lame. The wireless connectivity was simply awful and rarely worked. If it did it seemed to handle only a single bit ever minute or so, making it basically useless. There were rarely snacks and no fresh fruit and drinks available at any given time. Maybe that just designate too many people as 'speakers' to keep up with the demand? The biggest problem I had with the Speaker Ready room was the glaring sunlight. It was in a room that had an entire wall of windows streaming bright sunlight in. While I worked on my computer it was more like looking at a mirror rather than a screen.

So, since the bulk of my week was spent working on my presentation the only thing I have to talk about are the few things I did in the evenings. My first evening there, Tuesday, I was invited to be a guest at the Mission Lodge #169. I was treated very well and felt honored to be invited to their regular stated communication.

Out of respect for my host I will say nothing about what transpired at that meeting, other than to say it was most impressive. I would like to make this one comment however. In visiting other lodges I have now experience on a couple of occasions a substantial difference in my little lodges back home. In certain lodges around the country they are blessed to have significant endowments. Obviously no amount of dues can account for this largess, and it primarily comes from the estates of past members. While I have known intellectually for a long time that a large endowment can do great good, I have never really seen that in action at a personal level.

After my recent experiences I cannot imagine any greater way to leave money in your estate than by donating a portion of it to a Freemason lodge. I can only suppose that large donations to the American Cancer Society and other such groups does equal good; but I have never seen it. I have no sense of where that money goes, how it is spent, or if it is a good return on the charitable investment in the public good. How many lives does it touch directly or is it is just more research dollars for doctors and technicians? I don't mean to sound critical, I simply don't know.

On the other hand, an endowment in the hands of a Freemason lodge can directly touch so many people in the local community. I have heard some stories about some Freemason lodges which a large endowment that treat it like a great hoard that is to be kept safe and, therefore, unused and unmolested.

However, the few Freemason lodges I have visited, and am referring to, take almost every penny earned by their endowment every single year and plow it directly back into their community through service projects, scholarships, and other worthy efforts. Sometimes these projects extend further towards supporting an orphanage or hospital in the third world. The members of these lodges are honest, humble, and extraordinarily generous. Moreover, they do all of this largely anonymously. I am currently a member of the Lions Club, an excellent organization but, to be frank, every time we give out a $100 check it seems we have to do a grip-and-grab photo for the local newspaper. In a Freemason lodge many great acts of charity are done without any desire for attention, notoriety, or any other form of recognition for these acts. To be frank, my even discussing it on this weblog is a little bit out of line.

I'm not saying this to garner attention for any lodge I may have visited, or necessarily, Freemasonry itself. I am simply making the highly personal observation that I was deeply moved to see the power these endowments can have when placed under the stewardship of a well meaning group. It is hardly limited to a Freemason lodge either, I am saying, in general, that it is very satisfying to see charitable endowments made to groups which operate at a local level rather than at the national; where you can sometimes see huge corporate structures replete with massive salaries for the head of the charity.

I am not a wealthy man and what ever I might have to leave as part of my estate will go to my wife and family. I cannot leave millions, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I could certainly leave ten or twenty thousand to my local Freemason lodge. I plan to amend my will shortly to say just that.

So, that gets me up to Tuesday.

On Wednesday, again, I worked on my presentation all day. I did walk the show floor for the first time and saw various and sundry things. I did get to catch up with some friends and talk to a book publisher. A particular book publisher wanted to talk to me about turning the content from my presentation into a full book. I believe there is plenty of material to fill a book and I am seriously considering it. Up until now I have only written magazine articles or book chapters. I have never attempted so large an undertaking as writing a whole book. You absolutely do not write computer books to make money. I giant success in the game-book industry is considered 5,000 copies. There are no advances and royalties, once worked out against time spent, is probably well below minimum wage.

You write a book primarily for ego. It can boost your name recognition in the industry which will open doors for you, so it is not a complete waste of time. The reason I am considering writing a book is because it has been a thought of mine, for a long time that I would like to 'semi' retire in about ten years. Now, when I say 'semi-retire' all that means is that I will still be working my butt off, I just won't be going into an office and receiving a paycheck anymore. I will happily do consulting and other projects. One thing I hope to do is write one or two computer books a year which, while it won't make any great amount of money, will be a nice supplemental income.

Thinking about writing a book made me realize that I had given two presentations and been named co-author on a paper, not to mention having changed jobs, without updating my online resume. I took a few minutes to do so and also updated the 'goals' section with a warning to headhunters that I am happily employed. It's not really a resume, so much as a curriculum vitae. The updated version, as always, is here.

In fact this leads to an idea that has been forming in my mind for a while. As I become more and more one of the 'old-timers' in the game industry I often have to reflect as to whether or not I am still relevant. Sure, I know how to write thousands of lines of 6502 assembly code a day, much of which is entirely self-modified. Somehow I don't think that is helpful right now. I know how to program punch cards in Fortran to be submitted to a mainframe but I hear there is no great demand for that either. I have an enormous amount of knowledge I have built up and had to cast aside because none of it is relevant today. And, in addition to this, I have to play 'catch-up' all of the time. Now with advanced 3d graphics cards and their massively parallel pixel and vertex shaders, even a 'basic' graphics technique requires an enormous background in mathematics. My last math class was in 1982 and I am in no particular hurry to take one again.

It is very challenging for an 'old-timer' to keep up with all of this rapidly changing technology. Of course, it is challenging for a 'new-comer' too, but they are young, flexible, and haven't worn quite so many grooves into their cerebral cortex as I have.

What I want to do for GDC next year is submit a lecture entitled something like 'Wisdom of the Sages' with some sort of self-deprecating subtitle questioning just what, if anything, old programmers possibly have to offer. What I am finding out over and over again these days is that even though the younger generation is indeed often quite brilliant they seem completely unaware of some of the most basic, almost intuitive, things we old-timers have learned over the years. Even though we rarely program in assembly language any more I still believe it is of tremendous value to know. If you more or less intuitively know exactly what assembly language is going to be generated by the compiler when you write C++ code, you are far more likely to do it more efficiently. I rarely find a game programmer these days who, when confronted with a bug they don't understand, switch to the disassembly to see what is really going on. The biggest issues involve optimization techniques that have nothing to do with writing faster code. The best optimization techniques come from changing your overall algorithm and, of course, knowing when and how to do this. If I do submit this lecture I plan to gather pearls of wisdom from all of the old-timers (i.e. my friends) and present them in the course of the lecture. As I bring up each ancient programmer I will include a photograph of them when they began programming and a photograph of them today and, possibly, a computerized projection of what they will look like in 20 years (i.e. before they are supposed to actually retire!)

The other talk I plan to submit will be on server based physics, but that is all boring and technical and won't go into it further.

OK, I have become diverted from my original purpose which is to document the trip. On Wednesday evening we held our traditional programmers dinner with a bunch of us 'Old Timers' at a Moroccan restaurant. In the past, when GDC was in San Jose, we always went to the Menara which, to be honest, is still my favorite. There everyone sits on the floor, eats communally, and they bring out a whole family of belly dances, mother, daughter, kids, it is great fun. The food and atmosphere are phenomenal. The best Moroccan Restaurant in San Francisco is Marrakech. It is quite similar to Menara, and also excellent, I just like Menara a bit more. Our dinner party included John Oberschelp, John Miles, Ray Tobey, Billy Zelsnack, and myself. In the past we used to call it the dinner of the 'Johns' because we usually had a couple more programmers with the first name of John but, this year, it was light with only three of us in attendance. As always the dinner conversation was wide ranging and intellectually stimulating. It is always fun to hear what Ray Tobey is doing with his life and to hear the stories of the others. I took a couple of quicktime videos of Ray and Billy dancing with the belly dancer which I will upload sometime tomorrow.

On Thursday, more of the same, I worked on my presentation all day as well as the software that I wanted to release at the same time. It was pretty important to me that right after I gave my presentation people would be able to go straight to my coding website and download the open-source application that could reproduce everything I had just talked about. Unfortunately reality hit and I simply never found the time to completely finish and polish the build. I am hopeful I will be able to upload something later this week.

At 7:00pm on Thursday my friends from Rad GameTools held the Programmer Challenge which was a blast. This is game show hosted by my friend Casey Muratori and the judge is Jeff Roberts. Rather than go into any length trying to describe it, here is a link talking about the event; from Gamasutra.

In the evening a party called Level-99 was held at the Thirsty Bear Restaurant and Brewery. I was expecting to have access to free beer and be fed. Well, half of that was true. Their pale ale was absolutely awesome and I imbibed heavily. As far as food goes, the good news was that their food was great; the bad news is that it was only appetizers carried around on trays. As the evening went on they place became absolutely packed and nibbling at a few appetizers as they came by never seemed to quite get the job done. I arrived early and camped out at a comfortable table and began, once again, going over my presentation. I have been attending GDC since pretty much it originally started. In the first few years it felt like I knew, or at least recognized, every third of fourth person. Today I can go through a massive crowd of thousands and not see anyone I know at all for half the day. It's really not quite the same. At the Level-99 party I eventually saw one of my co-workers, Elonka, and she came by my table with someone in tow. Her friend was a developer at Electronic Arts and we ended up having a deeply satisfying discussion about game design until they kicked us out of the place. I took my sotted form back to John's house in a taxi-cab and had, yet one more, of the numerous fascinating conversations I held with cabbies throughout the week.

On Friday, same old same old, I worked on my presentation some more. Once it was time to start my presentation I was concerned whether or not anyone would even show up. It was the last talk on the last day of the conference and most people seemed anxious to get on a plane and get out of there. I later learned that many of the other sessions were practically empty. Two technical sessions had cancelled so I had the only programming lecture at that time. The way I figure it is that, for those who hadn't left yet, they figured they might as well see one last technical talk before they left to justify the incredible expense of their stinking badges.

About ten minutes before my talk was supposed to begin I fired up a teaser video to keep the crowd interested. By the time I started my talk every single seat was filled and people were lined up standing around all of the walls! I was, by now, extremely well prepared and, other than the fact that I simply read most of my talk out load, it went pretty much as well as could be expected. Because I had been over the material so often, even though I was reading it, I did so with confidence, clarity, and the correct expression. On some of the slides I just skipped the prepared text and explained it off the cuff. For others I added to the prepared text with some additional commentary. I received a big round of applause and pretty much everyone stayed through the whole thing. The thing which affected me the most was when I asked for questions and comments and David Wu was the first to comment on my talk! Afterwards he came up to the presentation table and shared with me the results he had done with similar work on his own projects. I was very flattered indeed. For those of you who don't know David Wu is the president and director of technology at Psuedo-Interactive and is loosely considered the industry expert on physics. Most of his talks are so technically advanced that they will literally make blood seep from your ears. At the time I figured having David Wu come to my talk was akin to Albert Einstein sitting in on an episode of Sesame Street. His GDC profile is here.

I presented an enormous amount of material in my talk and I think I conveyed a lot of practical and useful information. That, combined with the impending software release, and I believe it certainly has some merit. I did receive an additional round of applause when I commented about my belief and support for open source within the development community whenever possible.


Once the talk was over many, many, people came up to me to ask questions. One thing that was a bit of a shame is that a bunch of people I knew online came to my talk but I didn’t have any time to spend with them. I had collaborated with Christian Laforte and Erwin Coumans in the past year and this was the first time I had a chance to meet them face-to-face but I had no time available. Since I was holed up in the speaker ready room all week I never got a chance to speak to hardly anyone.

I was very happy that the talk went so well and was relieved it was over. On the other hand, I was disappointed that I could finally now relax and the entire damned conference was over!!

In the evening David Whatley and I attended the annual AI programmer’s dinner hosted by Neil Kirby. It was a great meal and, once again, great conversation. Afterwards we hooked up with everyone from Simutronics and went to see the new movie ‘300’. The movie made 70 million dollars in box office over the weekend, so I imagine a lot of other people wanted to see it too. The film has generally positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. It does remind me quite a bit of Sin City. It is highly stylized both in image as well as dialogue; as one should expect from a film with a comic book pedigree. At first I thought to criticize the extremely thin story line that carries the action along but I stopped and asked myself a question. Was I more or less entertained by this film than some of the other similarly themed period pieces of the past couple of years and I had to admit, this was a lot more fun.


Thus ended the week at GDC. I had booked my trip to stay over all of Saturday because it seemed quite rude that even though I was staying at John’s home, I had spent almost no time with him and his family. On Saturday morning John and I went to see the Masonic Temple on Nob Hill but, not surprisingly, it was closed that day. Next door was the massive Grace Cathedral that tries to look like one of the great temples in Europe with one tiny exception, poured concrete doesn’t quite have the same feel as hand-cut stone. Inside the Church was a large labyrinth that you were welcome to walk through to gain spiritual insight. I actually found walking it quite interesting but, so many other people were walking it at the same time, it seemed a bit distracting. I would like someday to walk a labyrinth in total silence and alone, lit only by candlelight.


This does remind me of the few minor Masonic encounters I had on my trip, above and beyond the obvious of my visit to Mission lodge on Tuesday evening. As I was crossing the street I noticed a gentleman wearing a Masonic ring and I tapped him on the shoulder, gave him a grip, and simply said ‘Well met brother.’ I didn’t want to interrupt him as he was with a friend, but from the smile on his face I know he enjoyed this small encounter between strangers as brothers as I did.

As John and I exited the Masonic Temple on Nob Hill a well dressed man approached us and handed us a card. It seems he was running for office and was interested in soliciting our votes. I explained to him kindly that I was not a native and couldn’t be of assistance. He nodded agreeably and with a wink is his eye simply said, ‘Well met Hiram’.

Immediately after this, while I was walking the labyrinth in Grace Cathedral I encountered a lady on her way exiting the maze as I was circling every closer within. She looked up at me, noticed the logo on my shirt and asked, “Are you a Mason?” I applied in the affirmative and she immediately said, “I am Eastern Star.” And, then, as if that was all that ever need be said between the two of us we each continued on our tiny spiritual journey, one entering and the other exiting the pattern.

After this John and I walked down to the Bay and just generally got our exercise. Next we went to attend baseball practice for John’s older son Hans. Since Mason couldn’t work out on the team I went out into the field and played catch and even hit some balls. It was a beautiful day outside and an excellent way to spend time with the family. After baseball I took the boys out to dinner at any restaurant they chose. In the evening, I still wasn’t ready to call it quits, so John and I went to a bar to meet with John’s friend Henry and discuss various and sundry topics. I had already shifted myself to such a late schedule that I am afraid to say I kept these poor family men out far past their bedtime.


In the morning I got on my flight and returned home uneventfully.


On the plane flight home I read the auto-biography of Benjamin Franklin. I don’t think I can say much about it here. I feel a bit embarrassed to admit that I had never read this slim volume that provides such a unique impression of this incredible man.


The book is by no means a proper auto-biography in any sense. Franklin did have a complete outline for a full auto-biography but, apparently, never got around to writing it. I am now quite anxious to read some other biographies on Franklin. I have had David McCullough’s version on my bookshelf for some time but had never cracked it. I intend to start cracking right away.

It is so unique to read about Benjamin Franklin in his own words, talking about himself. He always tries to demonstrate humility as he writes but, at the same time, record those amazing events he was involved in. The thing that impressed me the most was not just the quality of the writing but also how direct it was. You see, back in those days, people didn’t generally write in a direct way. What was especially ironic is that another slim book I had in my backpack was called ‘The Meaning of Masonry’ by Albert Pike and contained a lecture he had given some time ago. I was extraordinarily annoyed when I found I had to plow through a plethora of verbiage to consume whatever kernels of truth or wisdom might supposedly be buried within.

By contrast, though eloquent and well spoken, Franklin is always direct and to the point. He doesn’t feel a need to embellish or waste words when they are not wanting. He was indeed a man far ahead of his time.

Franklin’s autobiography is unique in that has no personal sense of his own history. At times he will spend pages on some trifling event that he personally found important. Meanwhile, while relaying this small event he will insert into a side comment something to the effect that, “Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I also invented a stove that year.”

One of my favorite things I read in the book was when Franklin explained the power of E-prime. Oh, of course he didn’t call it that. This term was coined by Robert Anton Wilson and championed in his book ‘Quantum Psychology’. Nevertheless, Franklin says in plain and clear language how the power of removing declarative statements in discourse can produce much that is harmonious in debate and reason.

Franklin also presents his views on religion and other related topics that can be very enlightening. Though he never explicitly mentions Freemasonry he uses the language and moral context of our teachings in nearly every page.

While he says many an interesting things on numerous topics this one simple message contains at the heart of it the core of our teachings. He holds the following to be true, if not self-evident, when one looks to the commonality of all religions.

“That there is one God who made all things.”
“That he governs the world by his providence.”
“That he ought to be worshipped by adoration, prayer, and thanksgiving.”
“But that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man.”
“That the soul is immortal.”

He was indeed a very great man and I look forward to reading more about him and, most especially, his journals, pamphlets, and philosophies written in his own hand.

Finally, back to the title of this post, as I read what Franklin wrote I so often wonder what he would think of our world today. So many of the things he strived for have come to fruition. We have a public education system, we have freedom of religion and the press. We have empowered the entire world to be able to self-publish via the Internet. I think there is a lot that would make him very happy and suitably proud. I certainly hope so.