Data Science - The Msc Begins.

Greetings all!

I am feeling rather geeky today. As I may have mentioned in previous posts, I have just started an Msc in Data Science. Whilst I wont discuss course content in detail here (that may be somewhat disagreeable to those that put in the effort to assemble the curriculum) I will likely put up a few posts on what it entails, and what I am doing with it.

For now, know this: It is the 2nd day of the course, and it is a lot of work... a lot of work with a lot of new faces... and it is a buttload of fun!

For now, here is an interesting article that gives a little overview on Data Science.

http://uk.emc.com/collateral/about/news/emc-data-science-study-wp.pdf

Laters
-V

What I'm up to

It has been a decidedly quiet couple of months on the Blog front, for that I apologise. I have been spending the majority of my time trying to keep sane, holiday period, family and making let's plays. From Monday I return to uni to start my Masters in Data Science. Im not entirely sure how I feel about this yet, family calls it me just wanting to be an eternal student, but I rather fancy the career prospects at the end of it! :-)

That is all for now, just a little update. I will likely post more once my brain is in action on various topics I will be covering as a method of revision, so prepare to be geeked upon.

-V

Velkairiwyth: Let's Play Link List

Welcome to my Let's Play Link List. I wanted to have a repository where I could keep track of all my Let's Play series' and versions. take a look below for links to Episode 1/playlists of each series I have on the go! :-)

Baldur's Gate (Enhanced Edition)

Bioshock Infinite

Minecraft Let's Play (Series 2 - starting at V 1.4.2)

Minecraft - Feed The Beast

Minecraft - Mini Me (kiddycraft Minecraft)

Skyrim: With Dawnguard - Mage playthrough

Xcom: Enemy Unknown

Xcom: Enemy Unknown Class Guide #1 - The Sniper

Welcome to the first of my Xcom: Enemy Unknown Tutorials! This tutorial will focus on the humble Sniper. Simultaneously one of the weakest and most powerful units in your Xcom arsenal.

My intention is to couple this with a YouTube video tutorial to show some of the points I am going to discuss here in a more cinematic and fun fashion. I will link it >Here< when it is completed.

First of all - lets discuss the available abilities! Unlike the original Xcom Defense/UFO Enemy Unknown  game that this is based on - the ranking system is not based on the soldier pool you have, it is experience based. This means that any soldier that survives long enough and does enough good work in the field can quickly earn promotion to the top rank. (Colonel)

Squaddie Abilities: Headshot
A pretty useful ability - it gives the agent an increased critical chance on the shot. Very useful against those armoured aliens that you need to take a chunk of health off of, or whom you would like to kill in one hit.It has a 2 turn cool down. Be careful when selecting when you will use this shot. Take note of the typical damage your rifle will do. If you think you will need more than this to take down the target, then go for it. It works well in conjunction with 'In the zone' and 'double tap' as for best effect the shots from those abilities will kill their chosen target so you can shoot at another straight after.

Corporal Abilities: SnapShot/Squadsight
Both abilities seem to be very good, but in actual fact - if you have a well balanced team, it is rare that Snap Shot will be more useful than Squad sight. Squad sight allows your snipers to sit in safety and pick off targets that your team mates uncover. This ability is particularly good when in overwatch when you expect your team mates to uncover aliens on the move as quite often, a reaction shot will kill an alien in the open before it can get hunkered down in cover. If you need to move your snipers - their pistols dont work with squad sight normally, but they do in Overwatch and depending on the pistol, your foundry upgrades, and wether or not your sniper has 'Gunslinger' (below) - the pistol can pack enough of a punch to kill weaker or weakened enemies, and the 'overwatch' area is seen as more of a dead zone from the AI (Notice how the enemy is less likely to advance when you have troops covering an area with their overwatch.... sometimes its useful to abuse this, even if you know you cant do anything if you were to trigger overwatch - its similar to suppression fire - the alien can waste their tmie doing nothing just to save from being wounded which can be a very important move if you have a weak or exposed trooper in their line of sight.)

There are of course advantages to Snapshot; your agent can move and fire their sniper rifle. This means they can relocate to get better shots at groups of hostiles giving In The Zone the potential to be a little more effective, but in order to do all this - you put your trooper on the front line. If you can see them, they can see you. Your sniper tends to be quite weak at point blank range which many aliens will be in, and they tend to have less health and weaker armour compared to other front line troops, e.g Assault. The best time to have Snapshot would probably be if your kill-team was quite weak and the support cannot be provided from other classes, e.g your sniper is your only surviving veteran, in which case getting in with the powerful gun and taking some names is a good thing. Of course, I still prefer to cower on the back lines and pick the enemy off one at a time.

Sergeant Abilities: Gunslinger/Damn Good Ground
This can be a bit of a tough choice. Gunslinger removes the weakness of close combat from your sniper. A good pistol with foundry upgrades means your pistols will be hitting about as hard as most of your other weapons. Damn good ground gives a little bit more of an edge to your sniping abilities. Especially with Archangel armour. The defensive side will rarely come into play unless your grappling up in the front lines, or your having a bout of last man standing with your sniper against remaining alien forces, in which event - your probably in more trouble than an ability will help with.

Lieutenant Abilities:Disabling Shot/Battle Scanner
Utilitarian abilities. Depending on what your other ability selections are, you may favour one over the other. Disabling shot diarms your opponent for a round - or until they reload. This is a very effective variant of suppressing fire, though it only affects one target it can be used to prevent a vulnerable soldier from taking a fatal hit from a nearbye enemy that is not likely to die this round. The Battle Scanner lets you throw a small object - akin to an electro-flare from days of yore, that will give you a display of the immediate area as if an agent were present. It does not trigger enemy 'spawns', and it can be thrown through doors. On many occasion, this can be very valuable. Both are pretty situational, but in the right situations can be a great utility. Choose wisely. Or do as I do - pack two snipers.

Captain Abilities: Executioner/Opportunist
I always lean towards Opportunist here. I use reaction fire a lot in the early turns or when I am expecting to trigger enemy 'spawns' so that I can get a couple of potential kills in before they break for cover. It becomes less valuable as you get the end-tier abilities of Double Tap or In The Zone but one shot in the open can be worth more than the others in some situations.

Major Abilities: Low Profile
Not really a choice - but if you have a sniper that needs to make use of cover, having any cover provide the full bonus is a nice advantage.

Colonel Abilities: In The Zone/Double Tap
Both of these abilities are AWESOME. I cannot emphasise just how good they are, and neither are a bad choice. Here is the breakdown. Double Tap allows you to take two shots. That's it, end of. If you run out of targets or ammo the second shot is wasted. In The Zone requires a specific set of circumstances to be met, firstly the target must not be in cover (yellow shield = Bingo. Get killing) And secondly the target must be killed with the shot in order to be able to move onto the next. Given the right circumstances it is possible to knock out 4 or 5 kills in a round with this ability. The chances of getting multiple kills are slim though, unless you strategise. I find that the ITZ sniper works best when paired with a Double Tap sniper. If the targets would take more than one shot to kill, two can feasibly be weakened into the ITZ snipers kill zone. Chances are by the time you get this ability your accuracy is going to be near or over 100%, especially if you throw in a scope and high ground/Archangel armour and Damn Good Ground from before. The front-line troops can also help the ITZ sniper out by using explosives to weaken opponents and deny them the cover that would block the shot.

Whichever you choose it is not a bad choice, but bear in mind that ITZ is much more strategic. If you are going to have a solo sniper - Double Tap is probably a better ability because 75% of the time you wont be able to get more than one shot from an ITZ sniper unless you set up the kill zone or get lucky - but that 25% of the time, your talking 3-5 easy kills if the targets are weak or softened. I think on average, I get more kills with my 'In The Zone' soldier, but this is purely due to the way I like to stack and domino the enemies with my snipers. In 27 missions, 68 kills compared to my more experienced 'Double Tap' sniper who has seen 49 missions for 109 kills.

Other important points:
Ghost Armour: Don't give this to your snipers - give it to fast-moving support units, and send them to scout ahead before the rest of your forces move. They can spot many groups of enemies without triggering their 'spawn' reaction (taking cover) meaning that your snipers can make short work of them before they become a threat. They also help your team prioritise targets, e.g that Sectopod just behind that squad of harmless Sectoids that MUST GO DOWN. (plasma pistols v chest-plasma cannon, plasma rifle AND a multi-missile launch pack? Gimmie a break :p )

In conclusion - Snipers are awesome support for your front line troops. The ability to shoot anything they see that they can draw a line of fire to, to Overwatch and shoot the enemy before they can dive for cover, or the ability to pick off weak or weakened enemies - or even fire enough damage into tougher ones so they go down is invaluable. They can be weak if poorly equipped or supported, but given the right abilities and thought they can be 'Angels of Death' - much like the achievement denotes. Snipers work great in teams with cross-over abilities to help them cover each other as well as maximise the kill potential from them. I have had missions where there have been close to 20 aliens, and the snipers have mowed the majority of them down in two turns with the rest of the team only getting as far as spotting them and taking cover. Rare, but a beautiful sight ^.^

Check out my 'Sniper Reel' Video >Here< To see my Let's Play sniper team in action.

-V

Xcom Enemy Unknown and the original :-)

It has been a quiet couple of weeks here at the LandOGeekery. My time has been spent either sorting some personal things at home, or creating let's plays on my YouTube channel.

I have finally pre-ordered XCOM which is released here in the UK on Friday. In anticipation for this I started an XCOM: UFO Defense / UFO: Enemy Unknown speed-play which I have been recording and putting on YouTube, with the intention of completing the game before release of the new game. FYI: I will start a let's play from the start of me nubbing it up in the new XCOM game, so come by and check it out :D

Other than this I have been playing Minecraft, and recording my Let's play & Let's build series, which can also be found on my channel - and playing on the MissMoonica minecraft server, which has a pretty awesome batch of folks playing there :-) Griefing is a problem, but in general the regulars are quite pleasant.

Oh, and lastly - Star Wars Roleplay... Have been having epic fun with friends playing this, I am thinking of posting some stories or session encounters here - but not sure how I would go about it considering we have clocked in excess of 50 hours so far playing.

More to come
-V

Quiet time :o

Apologies for the lack of posts at the moment, I am back to being self employed and rooting about for projects at home, and have just not been keeping up to date with interesting tech news, gaming etc.

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandera came out yesterday, cant say I am remotely phased. WOW to me was a social game, and with no social community that I am attached to, and my wife being to busy to team up with me - I find myself uninterested. Besides, I have a load of games to play through yet, in addition to my let's plays. If I play at all, it will probably be to get my rogue up to 90 in order to PVP in Alterac Valley over christmas (As is tradition for me :p )

What else...

Borderlands 2 looks cool, I have been watching let's plays of that and could be interested. The only other game that is out just now is Torchlight 2, and I am not sure what to make of that one yet.

Anyway, more posts down the line - just in a rut at the moment. (And now I have food poisoning so sleeping for the next few days seems a good idea.)

-V

The hunger Games, book and movie

A few nights ago, I seen The Hunger Games for the first time. I had a vague idea of the plot but the movie had never really caught my attention when it was in the cinema. Since its release, I decided that the idea of the combat survival interesting. (The Yogscast's Survival Games videos on You Tube might have also gotten me interested... I think Battle Royal may be on my to do list :D)

**Warning, potential spoilers**
So I watched it... and I must be honest, I found it very intriguing, I have always been a fan of the idea of survival stuff - couple it with the Gladiatorial theme of fighting to the death and the intricacies of the Political and hierarchical aspects it was cleverly weaved together. If you were not thinking it could easily be seen as a pretty simple plot, but the acting, the script, the behaviours, all of it carried varying connotations as to other things that were going on, feelings (or non) etc. It reminded me a lot of V for Vendetta, Equilibrium and that sort of dystopian future where governmental rule is absolute, and cruel. I watched it Friday night whilst my wife was working as she was not interested in a futuristic gladiatoral movie... Well, after watching it I identified a number of themes that she will like. We both studied psychology to some degree, have an interest in history, (in my case, especially the Roman Empire and gladiators), and the general depth the movie felt like it had I thought she would like so we both watched it Saturday night, and she enjoyed it too.

After watching I felt that I wanted more... The film covered most of the book very well, and I think added some very good elements via commentators, and the control room and watching the political interactions, none of which is directly shown in the book, only hinted to (It is written entirely in first person. Im glad the movie was not like this lest it may lend itself to a Twilight feel, and I hated the commentary there.).

I decided to pick up the book on Sunday. having watched the film and knowing the plot and what happens, etc etc I did not need to study every word in the book in detail, but I did read it quite thoroughly and it took me about 6 hours to read. The book includes some extra detail on the country, its history, details behind different things such as wildlife, character (and other tributes) histories and it gave me the info surge I was looking for. Overall I must say it was a great read, I am not sure if I preferred the book or the movie, but I definitely think they compliment each other very well. A few plot details are different to make the movie more dramatic/cinematic, but the book has more gory details :D


To this end, I would recommend both of them. I feel they compliment each other well rather than one detracting from the other like many films... I am left with one dilemma now.. Read Catching Fire, the sequel, before the second movie comes out next year... or watch the movie first... I have had bad experience of reading novels right before the movies come out (Return of The King, I am looking at you!), but doing it the other way round - the movie left me with questions, and the book satiated that appetite nicely.

-V

Farmville 2: Mini review

So, Farmville 2 got released today.

Upon initial inspection, this game looks pretty good. The graphics are pretty and smooth and there is quite a lot of detail in the game. Having played it for a while, there is also a pretty good tutorial system that takes you through the basics: planting, watering, harvesting, selling, making feed, feeding animals, expanding, buying - you name it. Frequent goals and objectives will keep players occupied and learning the game mechanics, as well as it being needed to expand into some areas. As an added bonus, when you level up all your crops and animals become harvest able , and all your resources like water replenish.

There are various facilities added in Farmville 2 that give the game more scope, for example the kitchen. Here, instead of selling what you harvest, you can create items like apple pie, lemonade, and the sub components that make them. These can then be sold for a lot more money. An excellent addition for the crafting community.

The interface is a LOT less cluttered than in previous games. There is a friends bar, and then 3 buttons:  Tools that contains things like screen rotate options. Shop where you can buy resources and equipment, and inventory where you can view what items you have collected or farmed. This greatly simplifies the gameplay experience and I can see it hitting out at everyone who was a fan of Farmville, and possibly some of those that were not.

Another nice added bonus is that there is no irritating music (Well, there is a burst when you start but I would not say it;s that bad), just the chorus of birds... Sitting with headphones in its almost like sitting outside in the countryside relaxing :D Save the periodic pop and scrunch as resources replenish and crops grow.

From a free to play perspective, it is as it has always been; no need to spend money but it makes things smoother. sitting in game you spend a lot of time waiting for water to refill and crops to grow. If you are an infrequent gamer you wont have this wait time but chances are you will run out of resources like water when planting your field, so it is all a little bit more restricted than if you were willing to spend cash.

As always however, Zynga comes running at the in game purchase side of things with a flick-knife and a lecherous smile... the in game cash is about the same price, but they have added a significant amount of purchase options, most of which will seem quite appealing. If it works it works, but the price tag is a bit high for my liking. I have always been a believer that there should be a balance in these games, and set a price tag that I would be willing to pay for a game as a budget for in game spends. This is another blink and lose £20 jobs I think.

That's it for now, I may edit in more later as I play and learn! Thanks for reading. If you have not tried the game, I recommend at least taking a look - if nothing else, the Farm Expansion animation is So Cyoooot!

:D

-V

I Phone 5 revealed Sept 12th

Found this article...

Curious! That's very short notice, although in todays market, an earlier announcement is not likely to do much good, simply slow sales of the current devices...

I think the iPhone 5 is the first Apple product I have actually considered getting my hands on... almost purely because from what I have heard they are breaking the mould that their past iPhones have followed. If it has a break-resistant screen, I may very well consider taking the dive into the Apple world outside of work/uni!

Anyway, as the title suggests, and the link states - it is being officially revealed on Sept 12th, so expect an update closer to the time with a bit more critique on the device. I wonder when it will be released... in time for Christmas I would hazard a guess at.

-V

Making money from the web - in fun ways. Possible?

Disclaimer: I in no way claim to be an expert in the following matters, this is merely a thought/discussion piece going over my own experience and research ;-)

Having a job that involves me doing a lot of research into advertising and monetising products, I have taken quite an interest to it. I spend a lot of time online, and as a result I have take an interest in playing around with the potential ways to make money doing this. As far as I can see there are several aspects that need to be addressed in order to have a chance here. Subject, Spreading the word, monetising and retention.

I spend a lot of time making let's plays and maintaining Blogs. I do these primarily because I enjoy them, but the amount of time I spend on them can be quite vast. To this end I have been trying to figure out how I can get this to work in my favour so that I can see some monetary return, as much of them require regular scheduling and content to be produced and is not too far off being a job.

So, lets take the Blogs to start with. Without a good way to spread the word, you need to make sure that the content you are providing is of interest to potential user bases, and is well worded so that users can find it. This is still something I am working with and intend to post about later, but my understanding is that the title, tags and content will all be parsed with search engines and the more it can find to use to match search keywords, the more chance there is of your blog being randomly stumbled upon. Apart from this, share your blog where you can. Find groups on facebook, forums, twitter #tags - everywhere there is potential readers and hope you made a good post ^.^

Monetisation for blogs is a bit restricted - there is Google Ad Sense adverts that most bloggers (even me) have around their page, but the CTR (Click Through Rate) for these is atrocious, although the monetary returns is pretty good per click. An issue that can arise here is many users 'abuse' the system by clicking adverts repeatedly or tying in with their friends for a click exchange system. Analytics from Google is designed to identify these behaviours and your account will get blocked doing this, so if you put up ads, be careful, but also don't expect much return unless you have attained a large viewer base and number of views per day. I am not well versed in other methods, but I will update this with any other methods I come across.

Blog retention. Retention is basically the ability to hold onto your readers, and having them return. In order to do this you need to post quality content, and post it regularly. This could be daily, weekly, whatever you intend to do, but if you make a habit of posting at certain intervals, your users will know when to look for it. Good examples of blogs that do this are Wow Insider - there are multiple articles posted daily, from numerous guest posters. This means that if you have them on RSS feed, you always have something new to read and can return again and again to indulge.

Retention example (Warning, confusing maths ahead!) of a YouTube channel: If you produce some good videos and get on average a 5% conversion rate, with 200 views a day then you are getting 10 new subscribers a day. After 10 days, this is 100 subscribers, yes? Well, there is also subscriber drop off. Retention rates dictate how well they are kept around. If you have a weekly retention rate of 95% from that point, then after 1 week you would in theory have: 95 of your original subscribers, plus another 70 new subscribers, so 163 with dropoff of those subscribers over the time period. Give it another 10 weeks (70 days, easy maths) then you will have gained another 700 subscribers - and lost (5x7 = 35) 35 of those, giving a total after those 11 weeks plus ten days: 665 + 163 = 798 subscribers. Sadly this is not as reliable a calculation as it sounds. Only so many people will be interested in your product and the more you have subscribe, the smaller the pool of potential subscribers there are - but very good content makes for a larger potential subscriber pool. I hope that is all clear, cos it did not type like it did...

Moving onto YouTube... YouTube is similar to blogs in terms of getting the word out, generating money and retaining viewers. Some YouTubers are able to put a video up that gets a huge number of hits, often because it is cure or humerous. If the adverts shown on the video are monetised this can bring in quite a lot of money. In my experience the click through ratio is about 5%, with each view that counts giving a couple of pennies to the poster of the video. On videos with that many hits, that is a LOT of money (as in thousands of £/$'s) but I think that there are diminishing returns on a video. For example, my first minecraft lets play which currently has just over 4,500 views - was returning about 50p/day from ad revenue with about 200 viewers a day. Now I am lucky to see 5p/a day from it.

If you wish to get subscribers to your videos - you need to make them interesting, and post frequently! I currently have just over 100 subscribers so I am no expert here. I attribute this partly down to them not being great videos (It is me playing a game and yacking away, and Im not as charismatic as many of the successful let's players.), and that I have not tried to 'get the word out'. Many you tubers will send messages to other you tubers, or post video responses to popular videos in the hopes that someone will click on their video and view. There is no doubt that this works to an extent, but I feel awkward doing such things. (Maybe I should, since to maintain the Let's plays I will probably need to start increasing viewer numbers to increase the odds of ad-clicks. To my knowledge all Google ad's and YouTube video ad's are safe and screened (Especially true of YouTube ad's as the videos can only be put on YouTube by a select few ad providers that need to go through a rigorous registration and screening process with YouTube.) I personally, am more than happy to follow links or videos that interest me knowing that I am helping the content creator out whilst doing what the ad;s are designed to do - but one needs to be careful not to be abusing this feature or they may get the content creators ad-sense account banned!).

Ok, I am rambling... but to summarize, I think in order to be successful at getting people to see the content you have created and to make money from it you need to have a plan that gets the word out, methods for monetization and try to make your submissions high quality, and frequent so that you can retain viewers whilst attracting more.

One final tip: If you want to get big numbers then take advantage of surges of potential viewers. Create videos or blogs that are on the ball and up to date. 50 Shades of Grey suddenly become a huge topic of conversation? (be it good or bad) - then any content that addressees some aspect of it has a huge potential viewer base (fans and haters alike, depending on the content). A good example from my experience would be my let's play videos on Minecraft. For the first month I was producing low quality let's plays as I was not used to the video recording, or the commentary. After this month of practise, I had about 30 views on my video with the highest hit count... Minecraft version 1.3.1 was released, so the day it was released I started a lets play. I had 1000 hits in the space of 2 days. I got a surge of subscribers and many of them are frequent viewers even now, a month down the line. Their feedback is what inspires me to keep producing videos as naturally my own wanes a bit over time - but a little community is starting to form and it feels great :-)