Trans Ontario Express

As I've mentioned, there are an astonishing number of topics for video games these days. want to be a goose, a bird on a tiny skateboard, or Eastern European border agent? There's a game for each. (And, no, I haven’t bought all those. Well, I’ve only bought two of them.)

And there are plenty of games stimulating actual jobs. For instance, there's a few truck driving simulations. Many would consider that dull, but enough people find it fun, relaxing, or challenging that it's become a genre of games.

There's also a genre of train driving simulators, where you can control a train, from your choice of various types of trains, various eras, and different locations around the world. Though the games about building the trains and running the railway are more popular, so that tells you something about the world.

I was reminded of this recently when I saw the latest selection from Humble Bundle. It's a non-profit that raises money for charity by selling bundles of older video games, software and e-books cheaply. Recently, one of their bundles was a collection of train simulators.

It also came with expansion packs that allowed you to add trains and locations from around the world. One of those caught my eye.

Yes, you can drive a Canadian National freight train from Oakville to Hamilton.

Of course, that struck me as odd. I assumed that if you wanted to drive a train, it would be one of the legendary trains of the world: the Orient Express, the Shinkansen (Bullet Train), or the Trans-Siberian Railroad. If you were going to choose a Canadian train, the Rocky Mountaineer would be the obvious choice, though you might also go with a line through Northern Ontario or Quebec, or into the far north. Or, if you wanted urban rail, you could go through a major city — hey, approaching Union Station in Toronto from the West, you go straight past the CN Tower and The Dome.

But no, they went with Oakville. It’s a chance to guide a freight train, slowly, through Canadian suburbs. Though you do get to pilot one of CN’s freight engines, which are kind of iconic in Canada. Though they’re iconic in the way a Coca-Cola bottle is iconic: so common, you barely even see them anymore. And that further contributes to the banal feeling. You’re doing a job that’s around you all the time. It would be like a taxi simulator. Oh, wait, they have those too.

Having said all this, I can kind of understand it. On the one hand, in our globalized world, what is mundane to some is exotic to others. I mean, I mentioned how the Shinkansen sounds exciting to me. But to a Japanese salaryman, it’s just a way to get to work. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for exploring your own world, but from perspective you’ve never seen. I have to admit that when I watched the preview video for the Oakville expansion, I was intrigued by the part where they show the perspective of entering the cab. Like most Canadians, I’ve seen about a million of those CN locomotives, but I don’t even know what the interior looks like.

So if this strikes your fancy, don’t listen to me condemning your fantasy. Have fun with what you enjoy, and don’t listen to the nay-sayers. That’s what’s great about modern video games: there’s something for everyone. After all, you’re living the wildest dreams of some kid in the 1950’s watching his Lionel trains go round and round.

Wax To The Future

A few weeks ago, I was driving along when a car pulled out of a gas station in front of me. Normally, I wouldn't give such a thing a second thought, unless it pulled out right in front and was dangerous. This wasn't dangerous, but it was just annoying enough that I gave the car a second thought. In that second thought, I realized it was a Chevy Bolt, which is an electric car. Why would it have been in a gas station?

As I got closer, I could see the reason: it was covered in beads of water, despite this being a clear winter's day, and it was very clean, despite this being a Canadian winter. Evidently, it had been in the gas station's car wash.

I hadn't really thought of that before, but electric cars need washes too. Well, I'm sure Tesla is working on a system to remotely clean cars - maybe with a team of drones - but until then, it's car washes for everyone.

That must be really awkward:  To you, gas stations are fading monuments to carbon dominance, which you’re free to ignore. But now and then, you pull up at this archaic institution. No, you don't want to use this business's main purpose, you've moved beyond that. And while most customers silently use the pay-at-the-pump feature, you have to go inside and confront the employees. Tell them, no, I don't need gas; I'm one of the ones who will be the death of your industry. But before that, can you make my car shiny for me?

It's made odder by the way gas station car washes have a kind of retro-futuristic feel to them. With their many moving parts, these pseudo-robotic servants pamper your car while you wait. It's the Jetsons future Boomers imagined. Just like jetpacks and flying cars, but with way less casualties.

Drop one of your lithium-ion transit appliances in the middle of that fifties future, and it's a real anachronism. Like a Buck Rogers Subreddit, it's the future we imagined confronting the future we ended up with. And — don't tell the Boomers — but our future seems pretty dull in comparison. The inevitable jetpack accidents almost seem worth it.

Truck To The Future

Several years ago, when Tesla first publicly introduced their Cybertruck  to the world, I wrote a post about it, but never got around to, you know, posting it. At the time (2019) the Cybertruck was slated for production starting in 2021. But here we are in 2024, and they're only now, slowly, making it to the road. 

I'm writing this, not because they're on the road, but because I'm seeing people's pictures and videos of the one recently on display at the Auto Show in Toronto. Although I see lots of Tesla's other models here in KW, I'm yet to see a Cybertruck. Even my phone's autocomplete is unfamiliar with Cybertruck. It just suggested "Cybertronian" instead, which I assume is the name of someone from the Transformers' home planet of Cybertron. 

Anyway, since the post is still relevant five years later, I thought I'd show it to you:

Tesla introduced its new truck this week, and it’s controversial. I mean, Elon Musk bragged that the windows are indestructible, then shattered them demonstrating their indestructibility. And yet, no one is talking about that. Perhaps more amazingly, I haven’t even heard anyone point out what a dumb name “Cybertruck” is.

Instead, they are talking about the impossibly angular style of the truck. People are struggling for ways to describe it.

When I first saw a picture on line, I thought, “Cybertruck?” Wasn’t that what Tesla was threatening to call their new truck?” (Sees truck) “Nah, this must be some poorly-thought out GM publicity stunt to make the truck of the future.

It looks a bit like that Robosaurus that they took to monster truck rallies in the nineties. (Fun fact, I thought it was called “Truckasaurus,” but a little research shows that was the name of The Simpsons’ parody of Robosaurus.)

Oh wait, that really is the Tesla Truck?

My next reaction was the same as a lot of people: it looks like a futuristic vehicle from a second-rate science fiction movie. It’s like, we don’t have an art department, and there isn’t much money, so we’ll just bend some shiny metal then put it over the chassis from a used Taurus wagon, and that will be bad guy’s car in RoboCop 6.

Or another possibility is that this a car from a 90’s video game. “We need to make a car, but we can only spare six polygons.”

There's plenty of other jokey speculation about how it came about. But I think the explanation that is closest to reality is something like:

Designer: Here are some concept sketches for the new truck project.

Elon Musk, pointing: That one! I love it!

Designer: Good, well, I’d like to do some refinement of the...

Musk: No! Put it into production now!

To me it really does look like the first draft of a great design. Every time I look at it, it seems a little more normal. Though it started so far from normal that it still has a long way to go. The big stumbling point is the — I can’t believe I’m saying this about a vehicle — peak of the roof. You just can’t look away from it; not only is it so out of the ordinary, but the main lines of the shape point right at it.

I can think of a few ways to fix it, which we may see before it reaches production:

• Move it a little forward, so that it’s where the top of the windshield would be on a normal vehicle. That way it will look a little more normal. It may compromise rear-seat headroom, but you could cheat by making the roof slightly rounded.
• Move it backward so that it’s over the B-pillar (the rear edge of the front doors)
• Round it off. I know, that would mean compromising the design concept, but I figure that’s better than having something so distracting in the middle of the design.

I think you could save the design, because I see the logic behind it. Tesla’s previous offerings have all been sleek and distinctive without being too revolutionary. That attracts people who want a futuristic car, but without scaring off people who might be uneasy about moving to electric cars.

But with trucks, they have the problem that they’ll never really be accepted in conservative truck culture, so the solution is to avoid even trying to fit in. The Cybertruck looks like something else entirely, and as a bonus, it is even more hyper masculine than existing trucks.

Another comparison I saw online was to that car that Homer Simpson designed for his brother’s car company. That car didn’t look anything like the Cybertruck, but the way the introduction fell with a thud was so similar. However, a car that did have a lot in common with Homer’s car was the other big automotive debut of the week, Ford’s Mustang Mach-E.

It doesn’t look like “The Homer” either. But it is a similar mishmash of concepts and whims that has people saying, “Huh?” Specifically, it’s a high-performance SUV...but electric...that’s called a Mustang...that’s not based on the Mustang. Okay, there is a market for high-performance SUV’s since they sell BMW M and Mercedes AMG SUVs. But still, is there anyone out there who values the Mustang name, wants an SUV, and wants an electric vehicle?

It looks like Ford, in a desperate bid to make its new direction seem cool, combined everything in its future into one car. We only make trucks, SUV’s, and the Mustang now, so we’ll try to make a Mustang-branded SUV. And we’re behind on electric technology, so we’ll make it electric too.

Looking back, it was probably a bad sign that I had to invoke The Simpsons twice in describing it.

Of course, the funny part is that the Mustang Mach E has now been on the road for a few years, which underlines just how late the Cybertruck is. You might be inclined to cut Tesla some slack because of the pandemic, but the fact is that other manufacturers got products out the door much faster. The idea of an electric truck sounded shocking at the time of the Cybertruck’s introduction, but now you can buy them from Ford, GM, and Rivian. It's that lack of speed, rather than their wild designs, that worries me most about their future

As for my feelings on its design, I have a much higher opinion of it than most people, not that that's saying much. I at least think it’s redeemable with some refinement. And as I said in this post, it still looks more normal over time. Though I find that now that I’m seeing pictures of it from a wider variety of angles, I keep seeing weird aspects that didn’t show up before. Like, from some angles, the hood looks kind of stubby. So I’ll give it a bit more time to grow on me. After all, what’s a few more years?

Game Stop

In video games, there’s this concept called the “rage quit.” That’s when a player ends the game early in a fit of anger. Often, it’s referring to an online game, where a player quits in a moment of emotion, and is seen as bad sportsmanship. But it can also refer to quitting a single-player game in a fit of frustration, often to never return.

I think “rage quit” is a very useful phrase, because it’s a phenomenon we’ve all experienced, even if we’ve never played video games. I hope it gets broadened to use in all facets of life. Plenty of people rage quit jobs, but you can also use it in less-dramatic circumstances. You can talk about how you tried to learn piano, but rage quit while practicing the B-minor scale.

But back to gaming. Sometimes, I would rage quit online StarCraft games back in my university days (“Damnit, we agreed, no grunt rushes!”) And more recently, single-player games that mistook frustration for challenge (hello, Mirror’s Edge.) But it seems to me that there’s another type of game-quitting that needs a name. This would be something like “Apathy Quit.” You aren't angry, you've just run out of enthusiasm. maybe you don't even make a conscious choice to stop playing; you just don’t come back to a game. Actually, “apathy” isn’t the right word, because it implies that you don’t care about the game. Sometimes I don’t come back to a game that I do care about. I’ve just kind of, had enough.

For instance, I “had-enough quit” Hollow Knight. That might be a surprise, since it’s a widely-beloved indie game. And indeed, I loved playing it, and have no regrets about buying it. But, having explored pretty much everything in the game, the only thing left was to defeat the last few bosses, but that would mean hours of bashing my head against the wall, failing again and again, and I just didn’t have the enthusiasm for it. So I just stopped playing.

Another game I didn’t come back to was Mass Effect: Andromeda. I mentioned being a fan of the Mass Effect series before, And I’m enough of a fan that I was willing to slog through the much-unloved fourth instalment in the series. Indeed, it has all the flaws people have complained about: terrible animation, an awkward user interface, and a general whiff of budget cuts. But I found it had enough of what made the original trilogy successful that it was still enjoyable despite its flaws. So I played most of the way through it, and then…stopped.

That was particularly odd, because it was right around the start of the Covid lockdowns, when escape into another world would be a welcome thing. But I had — once again — had enough. Another complaint about Andromeda was that its length was padded-out by repetitiveness rather than genuinely new story, and I think that added to the feeling of apathy.

So, why this walk down Gaming Apathy Boulevard? Well, I don’t have a big hard drive, and I have these unfinished games just sitting there, taking up space, so I decided to go back and try to finish them. Hollow Knight looks like it will be a tough task to beat the last bosses, so I may leave it unfinished. But Andromeda is close enough to the shooter template that I feel like I can finish up the last few side-quests, then bumble through the final battle with the Kett or the Revenant or Angora or whoever the bad guys were.

What have I learned from the experience?

• This is the closest I'm going to come to the trope of the thief/detective/superhero coming out of retirement for one last job. Everything around me seems familiar, but I'm still a step slow, and feeling unprepared, and just generally feeling “too old for this shit.”
• Games are complicated. You don’t realize while playing them normally, because they’ve purposely dropped new concepts on you one-at-a-time, slowly adding to your knowledge of the various systems and tools available to you. But coming back and playing mostly-complete games is tough because you’ve already reached maximum complexity, and now there’s nothing here to remind you how it all works.
• It’s weird that no time has passed in the game. Other characters are referring to things that just happened within the game, but I don’t remember them, because they were four years ago. Maybe in the future, games will be so sophisticated that they’ll notice when you’ve been away for a while and update you appropriately, reintroducing you to characters and reminding you what’s been going on. But until then, I’m a reverse Rip Van Winkle.
• It’s sort of like riding a bicycle. I didn’t go straight back to feeling completely comfortable, but it didn’t take long. Of course, it helps that these games are just variations on popular themes, so using the controls is just a matter of remembering which buttons do what. 
• Come to think of it, it’s been a while since I rode a bicycle, so I could test that old saying too.

Cuphead Deals With The Devils (Among Others)

With the All-Star break in hockey, I thought it would be a good time to look at a concept I'd wondered about. The history of hockey is kind of weird because there were so few teams for so long: We're told that certain teams are really great because of all the Stanley Cups they won, but many of those were in the original-six era, when you just had to beat five other teams. You would actually have better odds of winning a cup then, than you do of winning a division now.

So I devised a game to test the accumulated achievement of each franchise. Instead of counting how many cups each team has won, I counted how many teams they defeated to win their cups. In other words, each cup is worth points; specifically, one point for every other team in the league at the time. So a cup win in the original-six era is worth 5 points, while last year's win for Vegas was worth 31 points.

Here are the results (not counting non-NHL teams that won in the early years):

Rank	Team	Total Teams Defeated
1	Montreal Canadiens	231
2	Detroit Red Wings	147
3	Pittsburgh Penguins	128
4	Chicago Blackhawks	107
5	Edmonton Oilers	100
6	Tampa Bay Lightning	89
7	Colorado Avalanche	85
8	New Jersey Devils	81
9	New York Islanders	80
10	Boston Bruins	74
11	Toronto Maple Leafs	63
12	Los Angeles Kings	58
13	New York Rangers	48
14	Philadelphia Flyers	32
15	Vegas Golden Knights	31
16	St. Louis Blues	30
16	Washington Capitals	30
18	Anaheim Ducks	29
18	Carolina Hurricanes	29
20	Dallas Stars	26
21	Calgary Flames	20
23	Ottawa Senators (original)	14
24	Montreal Maroons	13

So what does this prove?

• The Habs still come out on top. While many of their wins were for just five, the sheer number of them, combined with their many cups in the seventies, gave them an easy win.
• The big beneficiaries were teams that won multiple cups post-1980 for twenty-odd points each. Pittsburgh and Edmonton were vaulted past most of the original-six teams, while Chicago has esteem they never used to have. That fits with how someone my age sees the league: the prestige of those franchises outweighs the prestige given to original-six teams merely for being old.
• Unsurprisingly, the big losers were the Maple Leafs. Only two of their cups scored more than five points, and they were from before the original-six era. Thus, they fell behind Tampa, Colorado, and New Jersey. Having said that, a single win now would push them past all those teams.
• The Rangers did better than you might expect. Yes, they've only won once in the past eighty years, but their three cups in the early years were before original-six, when there were more teams.

The Stylus Counsel

I have an iPad, and I've been interested in buying a stylus for it. (That’s the pen-like thing you can draw on the screen with.) Of course, Apple will gladly sell you one, but like most of their accessories, it's shockingly overpriced. I realize it has a lot of impressive technology, and it works quite well, but still, it is a pen that costs $130. Well, it doesn't even have ink, it really is just something to touch the screen with. So even worse, it's a stick that costs $130.

But I'm not going to rant about Apple products being overpriced; everyone knows about that. What I'm finding frustrating is trying to find a reasonably-priced alternative. 

I'm amazed at how bad people are at giving advice. it sounds simple: I’m looking for a cheaper alternative. Yes, I know that means compromising on features. I’m looking for a balance of features and price. That shouldn't be so complicated; it's what people have been doing for years.

But every comparison article just tells you that the Apple pen is the best. Really? The most expensive option is the best? Next you're going to tell me that the Bugatti Chiron is superior to a Kia Rio. And yes, I do understand everything in car analogies; after all, it did make this easier to understand the basic point that in more mature industries, we understand these concepts. But for some reason, the tech industry approaches the situation with the simplistic attitude of a five-year-old. 

You’d think there would be at least some discussion of whether the superior features are worth the extra money compared to buying a Chinese knockoff from Amazon. And I did find a lot of discussions in which people ask the seemingly-obvious question: What's a cheaper alternative to the Apple pencil. And so often the advice from other people is to buy the Apple pencil anyway, because it's worth it.

I think there's a couple of problems here. One is that there's very little understanding of financial realities. A lot of people can afford to spend a hundred dollars on a luxury, so it's not a big deal to spend that to get the best available option. But there are also a lot of people that can't spare a hundred dollars. If you're in that boat then telling you that it's the best option is not a real justification for buying the hundred-dollar stick, even if it is the best.

Also, I've noticed for a while now that techy people are really not good at giving advice on which products are best for others. Specifically, the problem is that they're bad at understanding another person's requirements and adjusting their priorities accordingly. They'll always recommend  the most sophisticated, powerful, configurable option, because that's what they would want. That's why your nerdy cousin convinced your tech-phobic aunt that Linux would be just perfect for her. I've seen the same pattern repeated over and over through the years and across different market segments. Just be glad they don't recommend buying a Koenigsegg Gemera because of the cool valve technology. Oh, there I go again.

Anyway, I did buy a much cheaper stylus from a company I hadn't heard of, after I did find some reviews that said it wouldn't be that bad, I guess. And so far, it seems to be the reasonable compromise I was looking for. But no, this doesn't mean I'm buying my next car from an anonymous online company.

It’s Time (Travel) For Tims

Tim Hortons is advertising retro donuts. That is, they're bringing back some of the old donut styles, for a limited time only.

On the one hand, that's nice. I miss dutchies too. On the other hand, this relates to a big part of why public opinion has turned against them in recent years: the selection is nowhere near what it used to be - it seems like every time you go in, there's one less thing on the menu. On the other hand, there will be some bizarre item that wasn’t there last time and won’t be there next time. These retro donuts are just the latest in the dizzying sequence of temporary specials.

I assume their strategy of recent years is to reduce the selection of available products to the bare minimum for efficiency's sake. They then compensate for the lack of variety by having the endless stream of temporary features. Hopefully you won't notice the jelly Timbits are gone if you're distracted by the new Chili Lasagne Bowls. But now the irony is that they're distracting us from the poor selection with the old selection.

I can understand why a company would want to restore some of what customers used to like about them. But being a temporary feature, it feels like a bit of a tease. “Hey remember how great it was when we had a wide variety of products? And you used to like us, not just tolerate us? That was pretty nice. Anyway, time's up! Next month’s feature is Chipotle Omelette Balls. Enjoy!”

I'm trying to imagine which other Canadian companies could restore what people used to like about them. Hudson Bay has already been having occasional pop-up Zellers stores, which is a similarly odd strategy of acknowledging what people used to like about the company, but without actually committing to it. I also remember Muchmusic had a daily retro video show a few years back, but even that’s gone now. Also, there’s quite a few companies like Sears where I’d say, it would be great if they’d go back to existing.

So enjoy the retro donuts while you can, and eat as many as your arteries will allow. If they sell well, maybe they’ll make a return, soon, and bring some of the extinct Timbit varieties with them. Until then, enjoy the Tuscan Sausage Dumplings.