The World of Extraordinary Apps

Smartphones in this touchscreen form have not been among us for a very long time. Even though before the year 2007 the origin of app-based mobile phones existed within a variety of BlackBerry brand models and prototypes in Nokia and NTT DoCoMo labs, only after capacitive touchscreens matured enough to be industrialized and embedded into popular handheld devices did they start to be really interesting and competitive. Today, after only a decade, the smartphone market is one of the most valuable on the planet, and app stores have reached the limit of 2 million per platform. There are literally zillions of apps out there, and browsing the app libraries became the real effort.

Anyhow, today, and a dozen years after the first touchscreen smartphones (LG Prada and iPhone) hit the stores, Viktor and I decided to film/write about a dozen apps that are a little bit unusual and extraordinary compared to those that are used on a daily basis by most of us.

To start with, let's first present the latest video from the zViktor22 channel and our recent collaboration. I hope you would like it, even though it ended pretty long, almost half an hour in length, and if you haven't heard of some or all of the apps we were testing within, it could be entertaining and educational. If it proved that way, you know the drill; please like and subscribe and/or add some comments at the end. It would mean the world to us.

Before I add a word or two to describe screenshots from the apps, it is only fair to mention one more app that we tested with this video creation. Suitably for this title, this entire video is edited in an app as well. The name of this really great app is Animotica, designed for Windows 10, and all I can say is that it is a valuable competitor for the Movie Maker and Shotcut desktop applications we were using regularly for Viktor's channel so far. Only a couple of features were missing for this amazing app to become a worthy rival, even for software with the suffix "pro" in their titles.

The smartphone applications we were testing were all Android editions, but I am sure for most of them, if not all of them, they could be found within the other two major operating systems as well. We started first with apps designed for the outdoors. For this occasion, we chose "GPS Compass Navigator", "Last Survivors", and "CycleDroid". Like Viktor said in the video, the first two could become handy if the apocalypse strikes, especially the second one, which is one great offline database of survival skills. For the GPS compass, it might not be really useful in such an event as it requires operational GPS satellites, but it was one of the best compass-related apps with maps in overlay included, which is ideal for camping.

CycleDroid is one of those few apps that we are using on a regular basis. It is basically tracking you while riding a bike and saving database entries of all cycling details, including maps. The biking map files are using recognizable formats and could be easily imported into Google Maps, for example. Sometimes it could be extremely fun—like in the above screenshot from the app, one of our cycling trips in the past accidentally painted a "sitting bear" shape on the map. We probably couldn't do it in such detail if we tried painting with streets on purpose.

The next three apps from the above screenshots belong to scientific experiments you could do with your smartphone. Perhaps the most interesting is the one in the middle—the app that can play a continuous beep by choosing frequency and amplitude. In our case, 1400 Hz was able to put out the flame of a candle! Of course, peeking into the microworld is always fun, and the first app on the list was able to take images from an external camera, in this case a digital microscope equipped with a powerful LED light. If you want to learn more about it, hop to Smart Microscope story from an earlier post or the Digital Microscope video from Viktor's channel.

Surely, the biggest power from the smartphone is the global network, the internet coming either from the mobile network or wireless receiver. However, we are taking it too much for granted, and even our smartphones can't operate in full capacity without the mighty internet today. Smartphones are able to communicate even without it just by using their network parts. Just like 'Walkie-Talkie' from the previous century, by using extraordinary apps like "Walkietooth", "Offline Chat", or "FireChat", we can pair two or more smartphones into a private small wireless mesh network and use it in the wireless range. The video shows how to do it in much greater detail.

For the next section, we are going outdoors again with two amazing games. "Street Hunt" and "Pokémon GO" are great representatives in the mobile gaming industry. While you probably know a bit or two about catching Pokémon in your favorite parks, hunting a secret location is also extremely fun and yet as simple as one such app can be. Simply put, it chooses a nearby location from Google Maps, and your task is to hunt it down. If you want to play it with friends, unlike "Pokémon GO", there are no rules but those you create yourselves.

The last section and final two apps belong to the educational realm. I left these two for the end simply because I liked them the most. I have to admit that I learned about "iNaturalist" while I was researching the apps for this collab. This is sort of a social network that helps with identifying species. The idea is simple—just photograph an unfamiliar plant, insect, or animal, send it to the app and an automated algorithm, and people will identify it for you. Last summer, one strange bird landed on the high branch of our birch tree. Viktor and I took the photo, and to test it, we uploaded it to iNaturalist for identification. Only a couple of hours later, we got three matching recognitions. Common Wood-Pigeon. 100% correct. Amazing!

The last, but not the least, comes "Star Chart". The app that uses all the orientation sensors from the smartphone to identify its position in 3D space and, with the addition of GPS coordinates, creates an augmented reality view toward the stars and all the visible and invisible stellar objects known to man. If you own a small educational telescope, you need to know where to point it. It served me well before when I wanted to show Viktor's friends Jupiter's moons, the most famous constellations and stars, Mars' redness, and Saturn's rings, but even without the scope, its educational value is priceless.

At the very end of the story about extraordinary apps we found exciting, useful, or just fun, I am enclosing the links for all the apps from the post and video. Hopefully you will find a home for some of them on your smartphone as well, or at least inspiration to search for more.

Mobile Outdoor Games:
Throwy Phone Extreme! | Street Hunt | Pokémon GO

Experiments and Science:
MScopes for USB Camera | Spectroid | Yet another Air BLOwer: YABLO

Offline Audio/Video/Chat:
FireChat | Walkietooth | Offline Chat

Education and Space:
iNaturalist | Star Chart

Tools and Outdoor:
Army Knife | GPS Compass Navigator | Last Survivors | CycleDroid

Retro Games

I am not absolutely sure that 'Retro Games' is the correct title here; after all, in the realm of video games, what is today ultra-modern and state-of-the-art within the current level of GPUs and gaming consoles, literally tomorrow we can start considering retro. On the other side, the imagination of people in the gaming industry is never old, and some games from the past, despite obsolete graphics, will always be on the top shelf of mine. Not to mention those familiar nostalgia moments when I stumble on some vintage and familiar screen that always reminds me of some happy moments from the past.

To cut the story short, one of those vintage moments triggered the idea for Viktor's and my new blog-vlog collaboration to explore a couple of old games for his channel and this small cover story. We made an easy deal and divided tasks for me to choose the games and for him to play them in front of the camera. It was interesting enough to see how a 12-year-old reacts to the old graphics and different nature of old games compared to nowadays, not only to the superb visual effects and large screens but also to the new way of gaming, which includes an amazing 3D environment along with a networked gamer's world with other players from around the globe participating in the same game in real time.

Surprisingly, he liked almost all of the 12 games I chose for the event and even installed one of them for later entertainment. The selection was not easy; there were tons of games to choose from various consoles and home computers from the 20th century, and it was hard not to be subjective. However, it was not possible to avoid some of the classics, so in the first group I chose games that are considered to be the first commercial games invented and put into production, including "Spacewar!" and "Computer Space", which originated from the DEC PDP-1 showpiece application and transferred to the first mall game console ever in 1971. It triggered a new industry race, and the very next year came PONG, the second extremely popular game that soon after occupied first home consoles as well. I also had one in the late seventies when I was even younger than Viktor today, and it was spectacular, with almost outworldly experience every time I plugged it on and connected to our old CRT television set!

The following group of unavoidable games were certainly real classics. Games that everybody was familiar with and games that still, even though not played with like before, experience media exposure, especially in movies, YouTube, and TV shows. The three games I chose were Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Super Mario Bros. At the end of the century, you could find them everywhere: malls and game shops, home consoles, and personal computers. Now, they live their second life in browser emulators and smartphone apps. They are not super popular, but they are still here with all of their successors and game-alike applications.

Somehow, at the same time these classics achieved the medal of popularity, home computers replaced game machines and playground shops, and I chose three of those with three game representatives that were very popular in their time. Europe's number one home computer came from Sir Clive Sinclair Labs, and his ZX Spectrum won people's hearts almost instantly. Mine too. This was my first home computer, I already wrote about on the blog, and of all the games I owned on audiotapes, perhaps the most memorable was "Jumping Jack", which Viktor liked a lot. During my high school and early university days, the CPU Z80 was the one I wrote my first machine-assembly code for, including an emulator for assembly language. Great days they were. But to conclude with this block of games, I also included "Mission: Impossible" from the equally popular Commodore 64 and "Prince of Persia" from the first PCs and their DOS environment.

The remaining three games from Viktor's video were also unavoidable: 'Space Invaders' and "Galaga" for their representative, "Tetris" for the choice of the most popular game from the first-hand consoles, and of course Atari 2600's E.T. to represent the officially worst game ever. I had to stop there; otherwise, the YouTube video would be too long, and even with these twelve, it broke the 30-minute limit I had in mind. Even though it's long, it goes without saying that I warmly recommend watching the embedded video. If you belong to the old school like me or the new one like Viktor, this story has the potential to bring your old memories back to the surface or trigger a perspective of how games looked back then in the beginning, and I promise you if you follow some of the included links to their browser emulators, the gamer's joy will emerge, if not once again, then only for a brief moment of guaranteed entertainment.

References and links to the game emulators:

Spacewar! and Computer Space (DEC PDP-1 computer from 1959 with first game in 1961 and portable console from 1971 influenced by original PDP-1 game)
https://www.masswerk.at/icss/

Pong (aka 'Table Tennis for two players' from 1972)
http://www.ponggame.org/

ZX Spectrum (1982)
http://torinak.com/qaop

Commodore 64 (1982)
https://c64g.com/games/
https://c64emulator.111mb.de/index.php?site=pp_javascript&lang=en&group=c64

DOS Games (1981)
https://www.dosgamesarchive.com/

Online emulators (Atari 2600 from 1977)
https://virtualconsoles.com/online-emulators/

Pacman (1980)
http://www.pickychicky.com/pacman/pacmanfs.html

Donkey Kong (1981)
http://arcade.modemhelp.net/full-5448-Donkey_Kong_Classic.html

Super Mario (1983)
http://www.uta.edu/utari/acs/ASL_site/Homepage/Misc/Mario/index.html

Prince of Persia (1989)
https://classicreload.com/prince-of-persia.html

Is Life a Zero-Player Game?

Think about it. If life really is some sort of game and we are just characters in one giant artificial intelligence play, then... Well, let's just say that we can safely recognize not very enjoyable rules we unconscionably must obey. They are simple. We must play the game. We can't quit the game. We can't win. Oh, and yes, if life really is a game, then we are only either slaves in one master-puppeteer god-like performance, or we could be just a bunch of units interacting with each other in a sort of limited free will world or a world where free will is just an illusion. Now, if life really WAS a game, what would you prefer?

Olivia Wilde & Garrett Hedlund in 'Tron: Legacy'*

It is obvious that the first option is what we easily recognize as a religious world. If you ask me, this is a simple marionette type of world in which we, being game units, have little or no influence in the game, and we must obey divine rules and please the puppeteer. From my point of view, let's just hope this is not the case. However, the second scenario is something worthwhile to give further thought to. If life is something like one large simulation with characters playing the game independently without creator influence during the game, then we are just participating in one giant zero-player environment that started eons ago in the point of history where evolution began with a predefined start pattern. And evolution is nothing more than just a set of rules in the complex game algorithm, and time is just an iteration flow in patterns changing from one state into another by following the rules.

Confused?

Ok, let's simplify the scope and check one famous zero-player game that might help understanding the basic principle. The inventor is perhaps one of the great minds in the world, John Horton Conway, a mathematician from Princeton University, who tried to simplify the original John von Neumann idea to explain evolution with the creation of a mathematical model without explosive growth over time, using just small initial patterns with unstoppable and unpredictable outcomes with a set of rules as simple as possible, which would drive the entire system forward in time. Conway came up with a brilliant two-dimensional matrix where one dot represents one living cell. Cells obey four simple rules:

1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies (death by underpopulation).
2. Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies (death by overpopulation).
3. Any live cell with two or three live neighbors continues to the next generation (survival).
4. Any dead cells of exactly three live neighbors will come back to life (birth).

Conway's matrix is, just like life, infinite in size, but for demonstration purposes the following example is finite matrix that. Just FYI, as a single cell is clickable, I couldn't make it mobile or any small display friendly. To try it out, you would really need to use an old-fashioned computer screen and mouse pointer. Please feel free to play and create your own pattern and see what happens. This is, of course, a zero-player game, so your godlike intervention in this game is only to create the initial organism. The Conway's game of life then operates on its own, and you can only watch.

Conway's brilliant experiment is only a two-dimensional game with a small number of simple rules, yet it opens endless fun and endless variations in the evolution of different patterns and their interactions. Now, is it possible to create, hypothetically speaking, a very complicated game on a molecular level with complicated rules within the realm of chemistry? And instead of an endless matrix, use the three-dimensional surface of a planet? Is that what the Earth is? One giant playground with molecules in endless interactions with each other, and we are today just a snapshot in the game's current evolution stage?

It surely fits the world surrounding us and the one in the past. In this game, the world before was less complex than it is today, and the world today is less complex than the one from the future. Living units in the game are evolving due to infinite interactions, and if we go to the very beginning, to the first pattern of living cells, some 3.8 billion years ago, approximately 750 million years after Earth was formed, it is clear that we indeed might be living in a complex biological game. The game is without players and puppeteers and only with living organisms with developed conscious minds. In order to neatly describe the current stage of the game, I will just quote Stephen Hawking: "We humans are highly complex biological machines behaving in accordance with the laws of nature. Our brains create and sustain our conscious minds through an extraordinary network of interacting neurons. That consciousness creates a three-dimensional model of the outside world: a best-fit model that we call reality."

Red Pill or Blue Pill?***

You might be asking now where free will fits in the game. If we are not players per se, then do we even possess such things? Are we able, being units in the game, just by following the rules, no matter how complex they are, to choose our own course of action without constraints and fate? If the game model like this one is correct, then I am pretty sure we can stop thinking about free will. There is no such thing, at least in the raw meaning of the word. Yes, we are able to control our actions and to choose certain paths, which gives us the illusion of free will, but even if we choose one path in favor of another, we are not really capable of calculating where this chosen path really leads to or where it ends. There are simply too many unknown variables on the way. Not to mention that we are completely incapable of knowing who or what we will stumble on on the chosen path and how this new interaction will play out in the game.

But the beautiful thing in this mind experiment called "Game of Life" is that even though we only have limited free will, as it seems, there is no fate as well. And even though the rules are definite and inexorable, due to the enormous size of the game level and complexity of the rules and the infinite number of organisms and molecules, it is really impossible to calculate the outcome of the game or any of the game's parts separated either in space or in time. At least from the inside of the game. And as it appears, there is no outside of the game as well. If there was, then, like in Conway's game embedded in this post above, there could be a "reset" button somewhere. "The button" that has perhaps been pressed about five times so far.****

But, like in any game, there might be glitches, lags, and bugs (like fabulously portrayed in Tron movies and series*). And I definitely had that in mind when last summer Viktor and I filmed a short movie with the same name** that exploits this very scientific thought. It's our first and only movie so far, so it's full of imperfection, but to sum it up, its plot tells a story about a young boy who's following a glitch in the system, presented in real life as a firefly, through numerous portals to the place where he meets a man with the final orb, the artifact that seems to be a way in for full understanding of life itself, its origin, and the rules it is built on. The entire movie is embedded above, and for more about all the filming and production, please find the referenced link within.

Image refs:
* http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/,
** http://www.milanzivic.com/2016/08/game-of-life.html
*** Cornell Math Explorers' Club

Code ref:
** https://codepen.io/RBSpatz/pen/rLyNLb

Refs:
**** http://www.milanzivic.com/2015/06/the-sixth-great-dying.html
http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/lexicon/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_Game_of_Life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-player_game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horton_Conway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
http://www.hawking.org.uk/videos.html
http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_life.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9841/
http://www.iep.utm.edu/freewill/

Interview With an Expert

Have you ever thought about the most common software application installed on your computerized devices in your home? Is it some super tuned operating system you can't live without? Or is it some sort of office application you use to write, make presentations, and connect with your friends and business acquaintances? Maybe it is your favorite browser you are using on a daily basis to connect to your social network? Or some photo gallery application with tons of your digital photos and video clips? Perhaps it is some Skype-like communication device that is always within reach? Whatever it is, and depending on who you ask, I am more than positive that there are no unique answers.

Microsoft's HoloLens

I am sure everybody knows (?) why they are so fused to computer screens these days, but in our case there is no doubt. In total sum of our digital home appliances that can be found on various desktops or fit nicely in our backpacks or pockets, the most dominant cross-computer application is Minecraft. That includes a couple of Androids and Windows Phones, various personal computers, and one Xbox console. Not only that, we tried the most of Minecraft installations, maps, and mods, but we are also hosting a small server with our own growing world. Well, by 'we', I surely include myself with a teeny-tiny share in the plural meaning of the world, but the majority of the 'we' belongs to Viktor, who is our in-house expert for Minecraft affairs.

But before giving some thoughts on the Minecraft game, I asked our expert couple of questions in hope of understanding why one not-so-graphically demanding application and one not-so-typical game that requires not-so-much-of-real-gamer skills when it comes to quick interaction between the characters and other players is so popular and truly became a worldwide phenomenon and won so many awards over the years.

In-house expert for Minecraft affairs in action

Following is a short interview with me asking questions and Viktor answering them. To be honest, I am not really that familiar with all the Minecraft world; let's face it, over the years it grew into a full internet movement with MineCon and everything, so I hope my prepared questions are not off-the-topic or old, rusty, and non-interesting.

Anyhow, I will be taking that risk, and here's the full interview between father and son and more than 30 years of generation gap in between:

When did you learn about Minecraft, and how did you feel playing it for the first time?
At first I didn't like it that much, but later, after I watched "The Asian Guy Gamer" and their Minecraft videos on YouTube, I bought a Minecraft disk for Xbox 360 and started making my own worlds. I am playing it almost every day ever since.

Why do you like Minecraft so much and how is it different from other games?
Because I can build things and make my own worlds. Also, there are so many worlds out there, and every game can be different, and I can do whatever I want.

What do you like the most in the game?
To search and mine diamonds and make armor, swords, tools, etc. To build large houses and castles and to play within online servers.

How would you rank Minecraft installations and why?
1. PC 2. Xbox 3.WP 4. Android. PC version is the best, simply because I can play in multiplayer mode with my friends online. It also allows typing commands and cheats. And I have a server of my own with my IP.

Who are your favorite characters and skins in Minecraft?
Hulk and Foxy for skins and Ender Dragon for characters. Horses in Xbox are also great.

What is the most complicated structure that you ever built?
Roller-coaster in PC and large, eight-story house in Android game.

Who are the best Minecraft gamers you are following online?
Definitely Pat and Jen, Channels: PopularMMOs & GamingWithJen. Also Think's Noodles, The DiamondMinecart, and Stampy.

If you could, what would you do to improve Minecraft in the future?
I would like to see portals between servers somehow. So I can make a portal on my server that ends on some different server. Also more interesting machines.

Which one do you prefer: Creative or Survival mode?
Survival.

Is Herobrine real?
Only in some mods.

Well, there you go. I can't be completely sure, of course, but it is pretty certain that if you asked any other seven-year-old Minecraft gamer, you would get the same answers. More or less. However, this game attracts players of any age. I was no different. I remember when I turned it on for the first time, and after spending half an hour in the tutorial, my first reaction was "What's this?" followed by "What should I do now?". And then I realized. This is not the ordinary game. Like most of the other games, where you clearly know what to do and what your goal is. No, here, there are no goals and there are no levels. There is no ultimate ending you are reaching toward. The only thing Minecraft is giving you is the environment. The rest is all yours.

Creeperized Wallpaper for true Minecraft gamers

As soon as I figured that out, it was pretty obvious that in order to turn the game on, you have to deal with two switches. One is to click on the icon to start the game, and the other is in your head. The one that says "Imagination Power On". So I clicked on that one too, and everything started to make sense. The next thing I knew was that hours passed in the real world while I experienced a truly great and short entertainment inside. In a nutshell, Minecraft doesn't require some expensive VR gadget to render the world for you. It does all that with elementary graphics and ordinary three-dimensional programming. What it is extremely successful with is the interaction with that other switch in your head that makes everything possible. Very few games are capable of such things, and this is the main reason Minecraft has been so successful for so long. For that matter, I have fears for the direction of future Minecraft and the vision in Microsoft in order to use it inside of their version of Google Glass, called HoloLens. I surely understand the need for next-gen gadgets and that VR is always trying to get into gamer's worlds effectively, but in this particular case, it could destroy the very essence of Minecraft imagination. I am sure that HoloLens, when it comes or in one of it's future versions, will effectively merge the real world with the imaginary one and, in this case, perfectly render the Minecraft world into your living room. Imagine that.

But is this really necessary?

Maybe.

Perhaps not. Playing imaginative games like this one is just like reading books. You don't need extra help to render the virtual world. You have the ultimate gadget already. For free.

The little gray cells.