The Simpsons: Tapped Out texture glitches

Hi! If you've come here looking for a resolution to a glitch or problem in The Simpsons: Tapped Out, I'm afraid I probably can't help you. I suggest you visit the splendiferous TSTO Topix and search there for your answer. I've been playing The Simpsons: Tapped Out on the iPad for some time, now. I rather like it. It's consuming huge amounts of my time and money.

Occasionally, there's an odd glitch where a chunk of the graphics get swapped out for something completely different. I've been recording these glitches, and I present them below for your fun and enjoyment.

Click the link below to see the rest. There's quite a few. Sorry. (Or not.)

Thanks for your time. I'm going to go do something more constructive, now. You probably should, too.

Bad automotive marketing decisions

There are a squillion possible things you can name a car. Generally, you take something that sounds vaguely foreign, and slap an "a" on the end. Cecil at The Straight Dope did a column a while ago (and by 'a while', I mean 'when I was one year old') on the subject. I do not understand the marketing logic behind the decision, then, to bring out a new vehicle with the same name as an older one. This is particularly puzzling when the new vehicle shares zero design lineage with the old one. It's not a two-thousand-and-whatever model of the same car, it's a whole 'nother car entirely.

Case in point, the Holden Cruze. Holden is an Australian car manfacturer. Half of the Australian population support them. The other half support Ford. I'll get to them in a moment.

This is a Holden Cruze from 2002. It's a kind of beach buggy thing. It's pretty hideous. The rear of the thing has ghastly round tail lights. It's about as intimidating as a boiled potato. You might sometimes see re-branded Cruze(s) getting around as Suzuki Ignis(es).

This is the Holden Cruze from 2009. It's an economical small car that boasts the looks and spaciousness of a larger car. It's actually kinda sexy, all things considered. It's a completely different vehicle, targeted at a completely different audience in a completely different market sector, and for a completely different purpose. It's clear that someone just kinda thought "Cruze" was a cool name, and it's a shame it was wasted on that Tupperware container on wheels they made in 2002 -- but wait, maybe no-one will remember that piece of junk. Yeah, lets use the name again.

The '09-onwards Cruze is also marketed as the Daewoo Lacetti, in a badge-and-name-change that gives it that ring of class it was initially lacking. The only thing cool about the Daewoo Lacetti is its occasional appearance on Top Gear as the "reasonably priced car", but unfortunately for the '09 Cruze/Lacetti, the car featured on Top Gear is an earlier model that bears no resemblance to the vehicle pictured above. It was also retired from the show and replaced by a Kia. That's just..........rude.

Case in point part deux: The Ford Kuga.

This is the 2013 Ford Kuga. It's a cool looking car. Mechanically, it's a four-wheel-drive (ish) thing constructed over the chassis of a Ford Focus. It's marketed in Australia as the smaller brother of the Ford Territory, and aimed at the 'soccer mom' demographic (ironic, perhaps, for the purposes of this article that it circles back around to the market sector the original Holden Cruze was potentially aimed toward).

This is great, except: In the non-rhotic Australian accent, "Kuga" is a homonym with --

-- the Ford Cougar. This horrid thing is a mid-life-crisis-on-wheels from the late '90s to early '00s that was marketed in Australia in thankfully limited numbers.

I do not understand why the choice would not be made to use a more unique name for a car model. There are now undoubtedly loads of Ford Kuga drivers who, upon announcing the name of their new ride, are greeted with the looks of stunned incredulity well due to someone who's just announced they've bought a curved-up ludicrous looking skateboard with two doors and a hernia, until they realise the error of their pronunciation and start inflecting the "ah" in "Kug-aaaahh" like Hermione Grainger.

As an aside, Wikipedia has informed me that "kuga" is the Serb-Croatian word for "plague", and that Ford didn't opt to alter the name for its launch in those countries. Dunno about you, but I want to move to Zagreb and buy a black one.

Seeing colours: I am a synesthete

Synesthesia is a neurological condition wherein one associates abstract, intangible things such as numbers, letters, words, musical notes or chords with sensory information usually associated with something physical, like colours, tastes or physical sensations. The most common form of synesthesia is grapheme-colour synesthesia. In this condition, one associates numbers, letters or words with colours. I have this condition. I've always had it. I assumed it was normal. I thought everyone saw colours when they thought of numbers, letters and words.

Wikipedia's page on synesthesia is fairly in-depth. There's also a website called the Synesthesia Battery which has an online test you can take to determine if you're synesthetic or not. (I took the test, and its results weren't as conclusive as I'd hoped for my own experiences. I feel that the test relies more on the user being able to repeatedly recognise fairly similar colours with very little margin for error than actually acknowledging when two quite similar colours are selected. I'm sorry, my brain doesn't function in HSV values.)

This is my alphabet. I own it. Hands off.

Whack the link below to keep reading, if you're into numbers and colours, and the unnatural marriage thereof.

Brady Haran's Numberphile, one of my favourite YouTube channels, recently posted a follow-up to their previous video on the subject of synesthesia. I've embedded both episodes below for your perusal:

Talking about Grapheme to Colour Synesthesia with Alex from Bite Sci-Zed. Do you see numbers as colours? Leave a comment. Check Alex's channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/Lexie527 Check Numberphil's NEW TUMBLR: http://numberphile.tumblr.com Website: http://www.numberphile.com/ Numberphile on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/numberphile Numberphile tweets: https://twitter.com/numberphile Google Plus: http://bit.ly/numberGplus Tumblr: http://numberphile.tumblr.com Videos by Brady Haran

And the follow-up:

More on number/color synesthesia, including your questions for with Alex Dainis. Supported by: http://www.squarespace.com/ (numberphile5 for discount) Blog with graphs: http://bit.ly/11yaWb8 Original video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNy23tJMTzQ Alex's channel is: http://www.youtube.com/user/Lexie527 Huge thanks to Dave Wiley!

I notice that these videos tend to avoid the subject of grapheme-colour synesthesia for letters and words, but I suspect there's a conscious decision at play considering the YouTube channel hosting them is dedicated largely to numbers.

I've included my own synesthesia alphabet above, for fun. It seems to me that my perception of grapheme-colour tends to be related largely to the geometric shape of the characters, with the following specifics:

• sharp angles seem to tend towards green and olive
• right angles lean towards brown, with "F" and "T" being very specifically brown. "L" strikes me as green, though
• Rounded shapes tend to take on a yellow hue
• "A", as recounted by many synesthetes, is almost always represented as red
• The three middle vowels are very neutral

My perception of numbers is more interesting:

Numbers ahoy!

There's less consistency, here. But, surprisingly, there's actually some logic, and much like Alex in the Numberphile videos, it seems to be largely factorial.

• One and zero are neutral, much like the vowels in the alphabet
• I have a suspicion that four is red largely because of its resemblance in form to the letter "A". If this is the case, my own mental association made this connection many years before Leetspeak was ever a thing
• A similar thing no doubt applies to five and its resemblance to "S"

The factorial nonsense comes into play when you organise the numbers:

Two, four and eight are warm coloured numbers.

Three, six and nine are cool.

I've found limited practical applications for my "abilities". One of the few is that in data entry work, I find that I can error-check data fairly efficiently by relying on the colours associated with figures. If a figure is supposed to be the same in two different locations, it's plainly obvious to me if it's not the right "colour".

Larger numbers are generally a gestalt of the colours represented by the figures that comprise them, with the hues blending across the figure. Some specific really big numbers have weird habits: One million (1,000,000) appears blue, presumably due to the connection with the letter "M", and one billion (1,000,000,000) appears green, again because of the letter "B".

Musical notes and chords also have coloured connections for me, again largely governed by the letters that associate with them.

When notes become flat or sharp, they change their appearance slightly. Flat notes (or chords) become darker. E flat actually becomes darker than its default state, black, but I can't represent this in a picture because there's nothing darker than black! Sharp notes and chords take on a desaturated look, with an ethereal kind of rusted vomit colour that I've been unable to represent graphically. (Come to think of it, I'm appalled by my description of it, too. Rusted vomit? Nice.)

Minor chords reflect a paler, ice-cream texture. Other chord types, 7ths, augmented chords, diminished chords, etc, have their own peculiar qualities.

I find it exciting to think about the possibility that synesthesia may be the only quantifiable example of qualia at work. Qualia is a collective term for all the little things that happen inside your mind, that you can't directly share with another person. For example:

• The age-old psychological litmus test: Do you see colours the same way I do? Is my red your blue? Does it matter?
• What does a strawberry taste like to you?
• What does a noise sound like to you?

Sensory information is fickle, and the idea that we all sense things the same way is largely untestable. The most frustrating (or perhaps relieving) thing about this problem is that it makes no difference in the end. If I see a stop sign as what I call "red", and you see it as what I call "blue" (but what you call "red"), it makes no difference, because we both call it "red" and stop at it.

Synesthetic responses could be the missing link for qualia. Many synesthetes report similar associations between colours and characters. Brady's second video (embedded above) includes a chart of reported synesthetic connections from his readers. It may be possible that this kind of information proves the existance, and uniqueness of qualia.

Oh, and Porcupine Tree have an awesome song from their 1992 album Up The Downstair entitled Synesthesia. You should go buy it from Burning Shed.

More heroes: Another three scientists

Hello! Please find below another sample of new scientists. These guys will be included in Heroes of Science Volume III, should I ever get around to finishing it.

Identify them in the comments, if you can!

Thoughts on Star Trek Into Darkness

I've now seen Star Trek Into Darkness, and I've had some time to collect my thoughts together. This collection of aneurysms is likely to contain mucho spoilers. If you haven't seen Star Trek Into Darkness yet, and you don't want to know what it's all about, stop reading. Click the jump for the spoily spoilers.

I'm just going to bullet-point my thoughts and observations. You wanted an essay? Write your own.

• I find the new character of James Kirk to be a bit hard to take. Chris Pine does a spectacular job of the acting, and the character is certainly real and likeable as far as the films go, but I have some issues with the way the character has been written. Captain Kirk was always the captain. He was always large and in charge. He was the shit. Now, he seems to be the kid who's constantly in the right place at the wrong time to somehow accidentally assume command of the Enterprise. If the third Abrams Trek film -- and there'll inevitably be one -- pulls the same trick, I'll be of half a mind to write a cranky letter.
• I liked the planet full of red plants and weird flaky white people with four nostrils and peculiar eyelids. I can see a potential sequel based on their worship of the bizarre thing that came out of the water, but that's probably unlikely.
• Spock inside the volcano -- I understand it was symbolic shorthand, but I don't believe Spock's resignation to death would have him on his knees with his hands in the air.
• Admiral Marcus's collection of starships seems to have codified the NX-01 from Star Trek: Enterprise as part of the Abramsverse. Joy.
• While the idea of a starship functioning underwater seems ludicrous at first consideration, they're designed to take quite a beating. Whether the engines and what-have-you would benefit from being drenched in brine is another story, though. Scotty did start to say something about the salt water causing problems. It looked pretty cool, though.
• I rather liked the Earth-based Starfleet uniforms, with their little cap. They're an unfortunate blend of the Star Wars Imperial Navy and Nazi SS uniforms, but you can't win them all.
• Admiral Robocop.
• Harrison's drop-ship thing apparently eats the firehose/rifle combination Kirk throws at it, then shits it out of its rear end. I do not know if this was intentionally slapstick, but it was both awesome and awkward simultaneously.
• Absolutely gratuitous underwear shot for Alice Eve as Carol Marcus, with Kirk glancing at her, despite the fact he didn't even remain on the mission as McCoy took his place!
• Why the heck was Carol Marcus in this film, anyway? She served no purpose apart from the very brief scene in which she pleads with her father not to destroy the Enterprise and its crew -- something that anyone could have done, considering he didn't listen to her anyway. Then she gets her leg broken and just hangs around for the rest of the film for no useful reason. The fellow in the blue shirt with an iPhone in the back of his head served more of a purpose to the story. I find this particularly curious and frustrating, as her character was established in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to be Kirk's former love intererest (and indeed, mother of his son), and there was zero chemistry between her and Kirk in Star Trek Into Darkness, given that Kirk will hump anything that's not bolted down. She was also written to be a mysterious character of questionable intent from the moment she appeared, and nothing whatsoever came of this. I don't mind something being set up to seem predictable, then the writers turning it on its ear to startle the fans, but taking something so established in canon and leaving it utterly lifeless is a bit disappointing. Maybe something will happen in a sequel. If it does, that's great, but it doesn't help Carol's limp character arc for Into Darkness.
• There's really no reason that Spock (Quinto) needed to punch in the cheat code and phone home to Spock (Nimoy) to ask for a hint on the final level. This scene was very obviously shoehorned in to get Nimoy into the film, presumably while he's still alive and willing to appear in Trek -- both fair points, I'll add -- but it added no real substance to the film. It's great to see Leonard, of course, but there was no secret given away in his message that Spock (Quinto) couldn't have figured out for himself.
• Kirk's communicator apparently works aaaalll the way from Klingon space to a pub on Earth. That's some good communicatoring.
• The Klingons were pretty cool. I appreciate the fact that they didn't stray too far from the established design for their makeup. The contact lenses were a bit more exotic, and I think the jewellery and masks were appropriate. The uniforms were pretty cool, too. I'm also pleased that no changes seemed to have been made to Marc Okrand's Klingon language.
• John Harrison was an interesting character. I avoided reading any hype about the film prior to watching it, and managed to largely avoid spoilers. I think it's a testament to the film's design and writing that I did actually question Harrison's identity right up to the point that he introduced himself as Khan. Various other possibilities crossed my mind, ranging from him being a Soong-type android to even possibly being a Founder. Obviously none of these things were true, but I'm glad the film made me consider them.
• Having said that, Ricardo Montalban's scenery-chewing, bare-chested, Melville-quoting, ear-slug-inserting psychopathic nutjob is a hard act to follow. I really had no hope that Benedict Cumberbatch would outdo (or even match) Montalban, so I kinda dismissed it entirely and took Cumberbatch's performance for what it was. It worked. I'm happy.
• As an addendum to that, however, I found the "bonding" scenes with Khan and Kirk sharing one-liners while completing their mission to board the Vengeance to be a bit out of character for both of them. I fail to believe even young Jim Kirk is dumb enough not to recognise that Khan is up to something diabolical.
• I've read some unfair criticism of the design of the U.S.S. Vengeance, along the lines of "it looks like a fanboy designed it out of Lego". Y'know what? It's awesome. Because it looks like a fanboy designed it out of Lego. IT NARROWS ITS EYE AT THE ENTERPRISE. The ship has freakin' emotion. And it's angry. I approve.
• Speaking of the Vengeance, that noise it makes as it overtakes the Enterprise at warp is all kinds of awesome.
• Scotty strapping himself to a console in the cargo bay and blowing the hatch is reminiscent of the Next Generation episode Disaster, in which Geordi and Beverly do much the same thing to clear the cargo bay of cannisters that are leaking radiation.
• The Kirk/Spock role reversal as Spock captains the ship into battle, unaware that Kirk is killing himself while saving the ship inside the Death Star's main reactor -- sorry, engineering room -- is a cool idea. Unfortunately, it suffers because it doesn't have the big selling point that the original scene in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan had up its sleeve: in the original, no one knew that Spock was coming back to life in the next movie. It wasn't written yet. Nimoy had essentially quit the franchise. Spock was over. In Star Trek Into Darkness, though, there's really no doubt that Kirk would be brought back from the grave, and rather obviously by the Khan/tribble science experiment McCoy was fooling about with a few scenes before.
• Was that a 2-1B medical droid in sickbay, or a nurse in a really crazy looking costume?
• KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN
• So the Enterprise is falling towards Earth. That's okay. They fall. They manage to get the thrusters to work again. They stop falling. They then rise, but without the thrusters firing any more. While I'm sure there's some kind of anti-gravity-gundulator helping to lift the ship, it seems strange that the thrusters wouldn't be firing to help raise the ship through the atmosphere.
• They fly starships through the atmosphere a lot in these movies. Hey, I guess they can do that, now. After all, the Abramsverse Enterprise was born on Earth, after all.
• Spock leaps from one floating garbage truck to another, identical floating garbage truck. This shot is clearly intended to show Action Spock, but smacks of not being able to afford or being unable to care to make another, different CG vehicle for him to leap onto.
• Starfleet Headquarters people: If you look up into the sky and see that a genetically enhanced madman has stolen a starship and is going Osama Bin Laden on you with it, you should probably run away from the impending catastrophe, not towards it.
• Until Kirk's resurrection using synthesised Khan blood, I expected the little girl from the opening of the film to reappear, probably in the context of "but wait, there's still an augment!". I guess Khan's blood just heals people, though. He's not a vampire. He doesn't make people into Khans. (Although, Kirk was healed with chemicals that were synthesised. He wasn't injected with Khan's blood directly as the girl was. Maybe there's still hope.)
• The mission statement of the Enterprise is really awkwardly worded for a mission statement. Cool for the introduction to a television episode. Bad for a mission statement. Just sayin'.

In conclusion, I thought the film was a bunch of fun. It had some quirks, as all movies do, but I'm happy with it. I'd watch it again, and I'll no doubt splurge for the Blu-ray when it comes out. Probably not in 3D, though. I despise 3D. More on that later.

Thanks for your time.

Follow up, August 2013: Comments on some common search queries that lead people to this article:

star trek into darkness nazi uniforms, star trek into darkness uniform nazi, star trek into darkness imperial navy Yes, I may have mentioned that the uniforms the Trek characters wear on Earth look a bit like Nazi uniforms. Who'da thunk anyone would have agreed with me?

Grammar peculiarities: "Mose well"

I find it kind of satisfying when I Google the crap out of something and don't ultimately come up with a decent result. It means a couple of things:

• it means I'm looking for something incredibly obscure, which is always satisfying
• it means there's an opportunity to fill a gap in the internet, even if I'm filling it with my own opinion

Case in point, the phrase (or fragment of a phrase), mose well. 

It means, rather obviously, "might as well". "I might as well eat an apple" could be contracted to "I mose well eat an apple".

Some examples, trawled from the results of a Google search:

It's more of a verbal slur than a contraction, and its something that has found its way into writing by purely descriptive means -- people writing they way they speak.

A brief aside on prescriptive versus descriptive recording of language, if I may --

When the words and usage of a language are recorded in the way they should be used, the recording is prescriptive. It's giving an instruction (a prescription, if you will) for how to use the language. A dictionary, usually, is prescriptive.

Descriptive recording is the recording of a language as it is spoken, with all its flaws, with the kind of "bad grammar" that evolves over time through a culture of people who use the language as a tool for communicating efficiently with one another. Historically, this kind of record is found in the writings of authors who mimic the voice of characters, inflections and pronunciations exaggerated or enhanced. Today, you'll find it everywhere, from Facebook status updates to "txt speak" and SMS messages.

There's some discord among scholars and pedagogues about which of these methods of recording is right or good, and at the end of the day the answer is always both and neither.

I digress.

Mose well is an informal contraction of "might as well". The closest similar terms I can think of are informal abbreviations like should of, would of and could of. These three examples are descriptive recordings of pronunciation, where the "ov" sound of the contracted "have" in should have, would have and could have has been replaced with its homonym: the word of. In my opinion -- for what that's worth -- should of, could of and would of are wrong. It's entirely possible they're going to worm their way into the English language anyway.

They mose well.

Heroes of Science: Norman Borlaug

Continuing the Heroes of Science series, here's Norman Borlaug. An agronomist, humanitarian and Nobel laureate, Borlaug has been labelled the "father of the Green Revolution" and the "Man Who Saved A Billion Lives" for his work in developing high-yield and disease-resistant varieties of wheat. Borlaug took home the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

For more heroes, click here. For the original, click here. For frequently asked questions and answers, click here.

Heroes of Science: Konrad Lorenz

It's about time the Heroes of Science included an ornithologist. Here's Konrad Lorenz, ornithologist, zoologist and ethologist. He's the guy who (along with Douglas Spalding, a century beforehand) developed the idea of imprinting in birds, and was awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his discoveries in social behaviours.

More heroes here, FAQ here, thanks for your support!

It adds up: Girl takes calculator to prom

I don't usually share and link stuff, but hey. Here's a little article about a girl and her calculator. Her calculator isn't haunted, but I won't hold that against her. She took her Texas Instruments model 84 calculator to prom. As her date. Yeah. Turns out she even made it a little tuxedo, and everything. Repeat after me: "Aww."

Sourced from Geekologie, Unrealitymag and a bunch of other sites. Here's the original tumblrism, from ishipitlikeups (and her calculator).

Twitter: Gibson & Atwood like Heroes, disagree about clothing choices

It's been a while since the Heroes of Science gathered any attention, so I was surprised to be informed that William Gibson and Margaret Atwood had a brief discussion about them over Twitter:

Heroes of Science action figures (working link)neatorama.com/2012/11/23/Her… #wantturing

— William Gibson (@GreatDismal) May 7, 2013

@greatdismal: But I wish the Heroes of Science action figures were dressed symbolically, rather than in their boring real outfits, eh?

— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) May 7, 2013

@margaretatwood For me a huge part of the charm lies in their schlump scientist outfitting.

— William Gibson (@GreatDismal) May 7, 2013

@ajkandy @greatdismal : Me, waiting for the Glo in the Dark Marie Curie(sorry, bad joke).

— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) May 7, 2013

..I did say it was a brief discussion.

Extra love to the others who joined in on the conversation to point out the lack of women in the original image. Check out the FAQ for reasoning behind this, and also check out the sequel for more scientists (and more women!).

Thanks for your continuing support, folks!

(Thanks to Derek for the tip.)