For National Park Week, the 100th anniversary of the US National Park System, my sister and I decided to visit Crater Lake National Park. It turned out to be a warm, beautiful day, very nice for April. For more photos of the park, see my post from last year.

Located in the Cascade Range near the southern end of Oregon, Crater Lake is the result of Mount Mazama volcano blast forming a caldera. The lake is roughly five miles wide and 1,900 feet deep. The highest peak along the rim is 8,150 feet elevation. One could imagine Mazama was once a good sized mountain.

These photos were taken from Rim Village visitor’s area on the south side. Snow piled high at about 14 feet deep, strolling along the rim trail was like walking among (shorter) tree tops. Calm, the water was glass.

Instagram has jumped on the re-sorted-feed fad along with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Stated on Instagram’s blog posted March 15th, “your feed will soon be ordered to show the moments we believe you will care about the most.” An algorithm (likely using a classifier) will sort the order of the feed. This post makes the claim that users “miss on average 70 percent of their feeds.”

My initial reaction:

• What if the average user chooses to miss older posts by only viewing most recent?
• Does this change address a problem or an observation?
• Is it just about increasing ad views?

I follow what I like to see most, such as friends and favorite photographers, and use search and hashtags to see others. I see very nearly all of my feed, unless many days have gone by and I’m only interested in the recent posts. I can always go look at their pages to see all of their posts.

In the past two weeks I have found my freind’s series of photos getting scattered about out of sequence. Photos by my favorite photographers may get buried perhaps due to that I only comment or like photos by friends. Even if I interact less, I still care about art by pros and recent updates from International Space Station (ISS). Besides, my feed update appears mostly shuffled. Whatever comes first doesn’t seem consistent, and multiple photos by same user on same subject ends up shuffled with the others and out of order.

This brings up four points:

1. A series works better in order.
2. Order adds context.
3. Immediacy matters to some users.
4. Users interact in different ways.

In a reverse-chronological sequence, one only needs to glance at a handful of the time stamps to approximate relative post times for the others. The order of posts adds context, especially when related to a topic or in response to other posts. A photo series stands out that otherwise might become hidden.

I left feedback using the Instagram app about wanting to see recent posts first.

As the apple / swift-evolution page on GitHub notes, Swift 3 should be ready later in 2016 with the goal of platform portability. Noteworthy for the programmer, Swift 3.0 refines language style including dropping some C-style syntax that doesn’t fit well. Coming from a C and Java background, I have two C-style writing habits that I must admit don’t really fit well in Swift.

• Removes ++ and – operators (proposal)
• Removes C-style for loop (proposal)

Since ++ and – doesn’t provide any in-line advantages, they don’t really do much besides allowing a programmer like me to type quickly by habit. For reading, it doesn’t save much space over += 1 and -= 1. I’m accustomed to writing for loops with the wonky semi-colons, but I’ve been getting into the habit of using shorter, more readable, syntax. Swift has for-in statement which is much easier on the eyes without all the wonky attitude.

Instead of:

for var i = 0; i < count; ++i {
  // do something 
}

Do this:

for i in 0 ..< count {
  // do something 
}

That second block looks nicer, doesn’t it?

Other changes for Swift 3 include the first argument label is no longer optional and minor naming changes like “sort()” to “sorted()” and “repeatedValue” to “repeating.”

Last week, a federal judge ordered Apple to help FBI investigators decrypt the employer-owned iPhone 5C used by Syed Rizwan Farook who took part in a terrorist attack in San Bernardino in December (ars technica, “Judge: Apple must help FBI unlock San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone”.) The order is to provide the FBI with a custom firmware to bypass auto-erase functions and allow investigators to brute force the passcode efficiently without the normal restrictions only for this specific iPhone, and that Apple may refuse to share the resulting software outside of Apple. This last part is the troubling point. Apple has challenged this court order (ars technica, ‘Apple CEO Tim Cook: Complying with court order is ‘too dangerous to do’) and recently wrote in a Q&A, “it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks.”

Tools, processes, and software used for gathering evidence may be challenged in court. Software may need to be validated by a third-party which would open up Apple’s backdoor to the world allowing others to reverse engineer for new products, or research for weaknesses. All of this could also be leaked to criminals. As noted by forensic scientist, Jonathan Zdziarski, on his blog post, “Apple, FBI, and the Burden of Forensic Methodology,” an established tool is “validated, peer reviewed, and accepted in the scientific community.” Before iOS 8, the FBI would have simply asked for an image of the data–a copy, a reasonable request using established methods. However, iOS 8 encrypts the data within the device. As Zdziarski points out, it would be difficult to get a judge’s approval to request Apple to exceed reasonable assistance to hack the device. Which is why the request is for the investigators to do the cracking using a special tool developed by Apple to make it easier. Any such new tool could be challenged in court, and if Apple kept its methods secret then the any evidence obtained would likely be thrown out. The FBI knows this.

The FBI isn’t interested in ignoring forensic science and knows terrorists go through the trouble of masking their steps which may include using other encryption methods. Law enforcement wants the key or precedent to go ahead with other cases, and take another step towards pushing for backdoors.

Abiding by the court order in creating a new forensic tool while maintaining the designed security is unreasonable. As Apple pointed out in its Q&A, this isn’t about marketing, but about the risk. It says, “The only way to guarantee that such a powerful tool isn’t abused and doesn’t fall into the wrong hands is to never create it.”

Sometimes it only takes a small thing to make a big difference. Here I share some lightweight, seemingly simple mods that give a big impact on gameplay for TES V: Skyrim.

Pretty soul gems

“MultiLayer Parallax Soul Gems” by MadCat221 makes soul gems prettier, and by differentiating filled gems from empty, improves gameplay. Filled gems appear to have an animated wriggling light effect inside the gem, a technique used for atronochs making an animated texture appear within a semi-transparent surface. Filled gems appear to have a soul inside, and empty gems appear empty. This simple thing helps a player instantly recognize the difference upon spotting a soul gem sitting in a room without having to pick the gem up and open the inventory screen. Handy if searching for a filled gem.

Lightweight, pretty, and cuts the cost of accessing a game interface resulting in improved immersion. Beautiful.

Knock, knock - “Is someone there?”

Knocking on a closed, locked door seems so natural that it once was a part of TES II: Daggerfall, yet oddly missing in later chapters. The Dragonborn, attempting to return a lost family heirloom, feels foolish standing outside and waiting, or picking the lock and accepting the fine. (Of course, the hero that insists on disturbing homeowners at late hours might deserve to wait outside.) Many have requested a door-knock feature, and a few have given a go at solving the problem. It turns out implementing a smooth knock-knock experience is non-trivial.

As Chesko explains on his “Simply Knock” mod description page, the core problem in Skyrim for the modder is that it isn’t easily determined where a door actually leads to. Using scripts, “it was impossible to discover important things like ‘Where does this door go?’, ‘Who owns this door?’ and ‘Are the owners home?’, before you actually go through the door.” To solve this complex problem, Chesko employed a workaround using “Skyrim Script Extender” (SKSE) function, GetLinkedDoor(). Thus, the mod requires SKSE.

Chesko’s implementation finds the home, determines if occupied by which characters (and if enabled), and fetches the matching voice (most of the time) for “Is someone there?” to greet the player when knocking. The interface is simple: if door is locked a dialogue presents options to knock, leave, or pick the lock. If sneaking, then it skips straight to the lock-pick interface as normal.

I found the default settings too welcoming. Using the MCM, I disabled option for friends always open and reduced base speechcraft chance to 33%. Sometimes even friends need their quiet time, especially if the hero always comes knocking at 3 AM.

Being able to do something that comes so natural, even if only on occasion, has a huge impact on gameplay. Well done.

Carry a lantern

Sure, torches are more convenient when investigating crypts or old mines, but a trusty lantern is nice when traveling the tundra at night. “Wearable Lanterns” by Chesko allows your character or follower to adventure with a lantern. Carry in hand or fasten to belt. Craft a lantern and buy lantern oil from a vendor. If using “Campfire”, lanterns may be crafted using survival skills, create item.

This mod comes in very handy if using darker nights and dungeons modification. Let’s get going!

• MultiLayer Parallax Soul Gems by MadCat221
• Simply Knock by Chesko
• Wearable Lanterns by Chesko

Screen capture above features “Gwelda Dawnguard Armor”, “Circlet Replacers for Women”, and “WiC: Cloaks.