Who are you?

[Rob Cashwalker]

Here on the forums some of us use more or less proper names as our identities. But when you want to address someone whose handle is say, "mtgrares" it feels very awkward to type that in the context of a name.

I am known online as RobCashwalker, but my real first name is Rob. So it's natural to derive the name, and start a sentence with "Hey Rob...." GandoTheBard is similar, "Hey Gando...." But "Hey mtgrares..." doesn't exacty roll off my fingers as I type the way I speak.

I was just wondering if some of the regulars here wouldn't mind sharing a little bit of themselves. Call this a bit of an introduction thread... every forum's gotta have one. I realize most would not post full names, but I do post elsewhere as my real self, with the same avatar pic, so I have nothing to hide. (I'm a mod at Sundance Tech-Talk)

Real Name - Rob Cashman
General Location - Queens / Long Island, New York, USA
Interests - Computer Technology, Telecom, Technical Theater, Magic
Status - Married, 2 kids (5 & 2)

Edit - I noticed you mentioned your ages, I forgot that might be good to know.... I'm 31. Also, I've studied Computer Engineering Technology at Queensborough Community College (Associates Degree) and almost completed a Bachelor's at SUNY Farmingdale.

[mtgrares]

Lol, yeah sure. Well I'm 30, single, unemployed, graduate from a state university with a bachelor's in computers. I'm Java Programmer Certified. Some certificiations seem not very useful, but studying for the test really helped me know Java in-and-out. I can code a hundred lines of code without breaking a sweat. I really love programming and I don't know why. Programming is usually very fun. Some people love to play football but I love to program.

About location, lets just say I live in the south east, south of Tennesse and east of Texas. My odd quirks include NOT having Internet access at home (that is why I'm not concerned with playing over the Internet). I use the internet at the local college and it is blazing fast.

I blog mainly because I like to write. And I love reading a good computer book. I own a ton of computers books, at least 20 or so of thick 500-1000 page computer books. (It takes a lot of background knowledge and references to write MTG Forge's gray user interface.)

I have a ps2 and currently love Guitar Hero 2, Rock Band, and soon Rock Band 2. I love old rock so much that I bought an electric guitar a year ago and have taught myself how to play. (Before majoring in computers, I majored 2 years in saxophone jazz, weird I know, Miles Davis says "Hi.") I love Jimi Hendrix and I wish I could play 2% like him.

And about my Magic collection, very small. Probably 200 cards from 8th Core Decks and various Mirrodin starter decks. And I've only played 2 games of Magic in real life when I was still learning the game. Wizards has a basic computer tutorial and I LOVED it. Then I found Shandalar and LOVED it more. I really loved playing sealed deck in Shandalar, although it seems like I had to always play red. Personally I know constructed (all the cards) can get boring and I always saw MTG Forge as a sealed and draft simulator. In sealed and draft you mainly attack which is easy to program, versus constructed decks that have a plan.

Well thats all a little random but it hopefully explains some of my tendacies.

p.s.
I started playing Magic when Mirrodin came out. And I own a super cheap computer that needs to be upgrading. That is why I use an IDE from 2002 to program. (IDE is like a word processor for programmers. IDE, integrated development environment.)

[Incantus]

Hah, why are all the magic implementors unemployed? (well, technically i'm still a graduate student)

[GandoTheBard]

Heh ok I guess I will confess that Gando The Bard isnt my real name...though I dare say alot more people know me as that than as Paul Emerson Leicht.

By the way Rob, I too live in the big apple.

I used to be more well known in real life as a magic writer for neutralground.net back when Brian David-Marshall still owned it and the store of the same name. That is I wrote a monthly (or so) column there in my usual fashion which dealt with a little deckbuilding, a little ethics, and a little social discussion. I was told by more than a few pros that I meandered too much in my articles though a similar number of players told me via emails etc that they loved to read that sort of thing. (You can read my old articles as archives on my site, though the links will mostly be broken by now. http://outofthebrokensky.com/newart/newarts.asp?ID=NGO)

I started playing magic in 1994 (though a friend bought packs for me in december of 93.) Sadly this means I missed most of the beta packs and all of arabian nights, antiquities and legends. I enjoyed the artwork of the cards but didnt really get into them until I was attending DexCon 3(?) as an RPG gm and notice people playing it at a little table. Eventually friends showed me how to play and between that and Jihad I soon had a fine collection of "flat crack" so to speak.

I used to be a beta tester for Modo back in the day before people paid to play it. Then it went "gold" and I stopped. I had already stopped playing in real life by that point. (After 9-11 my heart wasn't in it for a while and then I got into the beta and that was that...then BDM sold the club where I played to a fine Fellow named Matt Blank (spelling?) and I was no longer needed as a columnist so I stopped doing that too. Any way after a few more years I sold my collection which included many fine betas to a friend. Around that time a friend bought me another membership to modo because Id lost my Beta account password and the email Id used was no longer available. (Much later a phone call to WotC tech support solved that problem.) So I played on Modo until late last year. When I tried to play version 3 I noticed the client would eat every last bit of ram I had and still not let me do much aside from extremely slowly browse my collection. At some point I found MTGForge entirely by accident through Google and here I have been ever since bugging people and generally upsetting everyone who comes in contact with me.

Anyway Im a bit older than most magic players though not necessarily more mature. I am self taught in a wide variety of fields and because of this I have huge gaps in my vast array of knowledge. Gaps you could fit a Cruise Liner through. Lately I have been devoting my energies towards the visual arts at the expense of most of my other interests.

Rares (still dont know what else to call you) I wrote a simple js application more than a few years ago to help friends who needed a guitar chords reference: http://outofthebrokensky.com/newchord/ hope it is helpful to you. I've been playing guitar myself since I was 12 and as I said before I am almost entirely self taught. (Though I did have the opportunity to play with some great new york musicians at one time I dont count them as teachers really. )

[mtgrares]

Hah, why are all the magic implementors unemployed? (well, technically i'm still a graduate student)

Because no sane person would code Magic after working 40+ hours a week.

[mtgrares]

Rares (still dont know what else to call you)

I go by Forge but I created my e-mail address before my nickname. You can call me Rares or mtgrares or anything like that. I don't have much Internet cred, lol. I'm just a guy who likes to program, who also likes Magic. (Also I like trying to code the AI. Someday I'm going to make an AI so good it will frustrate people, that will be the day, evil laugh, evil grin.

GandoTheBard,
I've read a little about this, what sort of online service did Wizards have before Magic Online. There was something about an electronic Magic Enclyopedia for your PC and you could use all of the cards? Another question was did you ever have access to all the cards online? I would love just to play Magic Online if I had all the cards and could created any deck that I wanted to. And do you know why Wizards officially approves of Apprentice? (Weird side note, if you run Shandalar and then Apprentice, Apprentice will show the mana symbols. I guess Shandalar loads some kind of Magic font, but who knows.)

And about the guitar, I've sort of given up on chords, lol. But your chord application is very well done. I'm a single note type of guy. The action on my guitar is low and I just play the melody. I play my electric guitar with the piano for church congregation singing. I also play piano for church sometimes. Currently I'm playing around with Band in a Box, it is PC software that creates background tracks. I put in, C, F, G and it creates the background to go along with those chords. (I'm not good enough to play along with the radio or CD's. I need to work on my ear training, arg.)

--Forge

[GandoTheBard]

I go by Forge but I created my e-mail address before my nickname. You can call me Rares or mtgrares or anything like that. I don't have much Internet cred, lol. I'm just a guy who likes to program, who also likes Magic. (Also I like trying to code the AI. Someday I'm going to make an AI so good it will frustrate people, that will be the day, evil laugh, evil grin.

Ok Rares it is for now,

Heh frustrating like Gnuchess 5 and me? Darned thing is so fast I get paced to its blinding speed. (yes I do play fast anyway). Normally I dominate other players with my speed of play so it is frustrating to have the tables turned *shakes hand at the gnu chess programmers*.

I've read a little about this, what sort of online service did Wizards have before Magic Online. There was something about an electronic Magic Enclyopedia for your PC and you could use all of the cards? Another question was did you ever have access to all the cards online? I would love just to play Magic Online if I had all the cards and could created any deck that I wanted to. And do you know why Wizards officially approves of Apprentice? (Weird side note, if you run Shandalar and then Apprentice, Apprentice will show the mana symbols. I guess Shandalar loads some kind of Magic font, but who knows.)

Well before Magic Online went public it had a fairly long alpha test then beta test first closed (invitation only) and then open. I was lucky to be able to join the best team in the beta and that helped me tons with getting adjusted to the program. We called it modo back then and I guess the nick name stuck. Before that I dont think Wizards really had anything except Encyclopedia. As far as Appr 32 goes WotC drove the guys who made it away from developing it, very aggressively. Because of this an independant application to update the card base was developed by some guys on irc. E-league.com was founded for the purpose of using Appr32 for tournements online..I-magic.com soon followed. Both of those organizations provided updates for the client using the application I mentioned I am a little surprised to find out Wizards sanctions its use now. It was totally an underground thing back in the day. Though I guess thats what happens when the attempts to suppress just spread the problem.

I did have a huge collection in the beta but mainly from drafts so no I didnt have every card. Though I might have been close..nowadays it would be a lot harder to get that as there are many more sets online than there were. And dont forget the promos and vanguards. I have a decent sized collection in MODO (7k or so) now but its a tiny drop compared to most long term players. Also I have none of the current type 2 sets. All my cards are extended or earlier. Sadly I cant use them since my machine cant deal with version 3.0

RE: Guitar is something you have to practice daily to develop any skill in it and electric guitar might not be the best place to start with if you are trying to learn chordings. I am a fairly good guitarist but not so much a teacher as I learned from watching and from doing (experimenting). Learning to play by ear is a little bit of a leap of faith. Or rather just accept that it wont be good at first and just try and pick out the parts you recognize...eventually if you do it enough you will gain an intuitive sense of what the different sounds in a song mean/represent. Recently my family was shocked to learn I have perfect pitch because my step-bro helped me fix my guitar (he's super handy) and then I strung it and tuned it in front of them. I never really bothered to find this out for myself...I just assumed it was a normal thing. Because I have been playing so long I know what the unfretted strings should sound like. So if I can learn to tune that way you can learn to play chords and play by ear. It is a matter of sticktoitiveness and determination a bit (love of music helps alot here.) I recommend you get a cheap classic or accoustic (low ends can cost as little as $100.00 at Guitar Center for example) and get a song book that contains Grateful Dead, Neil Young, CSN, etc and learn how to play via the chord charts and by listening to the songs. Eventually it will come together

[mtgrares]

Thanks for the information about Wizards early modo efforts. Stuff like that is hard to find. What did people think of Shandalar when it came out back in the day?

When I majored in music my teacher forced me to practice ear training 15-30 minutes everyday. The computer would play two pitches and I would identify it on the computer, like major 2nd or minor 7th. At the end of the semester, around 4 months I guess, suddenly I could play anything I wanted to by ear on my saxophone, I hadn't discovered rock guitar yet and I was a jazz snob, I only listened to Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis or Cannonball Adderly. It was great back then when I had my "ear". I didn't have to think about what note to play, I just did it. Then the semester ended, I had like a GPA of 1.7 and music wasn't working out, so I moved home and started working toward a computer major at the comunity college, so of course I lost my "ear". I've practiced with GNU Solfege and have gotten better but I can't play anything by ear on the guitar or piano. (I played piano before I played sax and I still play piano, just church hymnal stuff.) I recently downloaded some "Perfect Pitch" seminar off of the Internet and it talks about "tone colors". I don't care if I develope perfect pitch, I just want to play things by ear. I'm a great note reader though, lol.

They say many computer programmers also play an instrument but I've never seen any real data on the subject.

[GandoTheBard]

Jazz is great and you mentioned alot of great ones there...I am not a jazz fan per se but I have spent some time listening to jazz (mainly on trips with my dad upstate and weekends with friends etc) I cant say Im a huge fan of Dave Brubeck at all...but heh to each their own eh? My uncle loved his stuff (he used to blast the dave brubeck 5 in the car on trips too...) I guess Im a pretty tame musician as musicians go. I grew up listening to rocknroll, soul/motown, rnb, classic rock and folk for the most part. My dad also exposed me to Brahms, Liszt , Beethoven, Mozart etc...but I always really just loved the stuff I mentioned. As I said to each their own. In the late 70s I discovered how to translate what I heard in my head to guitar and slowly I learned techniques from books and other musicians. I never really immersed myself in the technical side of music. I suppose if I was more disciplined that would have been the thing to do but as it was it was not really for me. Once I discovered the way theory applied to the fretboard (and keyboard later) that was all I cared about. I can sightread if I focus but it seems like too much work normally. I generally get a fairly good idea of melody/rhythm just from glancing at sheet music so more work doesn't really pay off. I think there is some truth to the idea that the same parts of the brain that are used for mathematics and logic and creativity (key skills in programming) are also used for creation of and performance of music. Hence alot of musicians are also chess players, magic players, poker players etc. However there is no data that conclusively proves this theory.

RE: Microprose's magic program, I think most serious players scoffed at it immensely though to be honest I only had the new york crowd of pros to get impressions from. Here it is probably easier for pros to gather and play each other than mess around with an AI that is laughable at best at their level of play. Particularly with cards that are out of date/incomplete etc. Being a nonpro, I enjoyed it.

The other thing is early cardfloppers were somewhat disdainful of the knucklerollers (roleplayers) (and vice versa) so the idea of mixing the two was probably a little out there to them. But then plenty of us loved the idea and wished theyd done a better job in the bugs department and the support department. Personally I adored the idea of walking around a field and encountering enemies to vanquish with the magic cards. The killing off the wizards in each of the 5 colors idea I found rather lame being something of an rpg module writer myself. I felt it was a fairly obvious plot but it is still a fun time if you are bored.

In general building a deck from scraps and having to ante your way to a good deck is a great idea that should be explored more by programmers imho. Particularly with multiplayer aspects. Assuming MONEY isnt the issue in such contests they can be quite entertaining.

Im somewhat partial to 5 color magic and wish Id kept my 5c deck when I sold my collection but I needed the money and alot of good cards were in that deck. (For those who don't know what 5c is, there are a ton of articles on it on th internet. Kurtis Hahn invented it (or formalized it at any rate))

[frwololo]

Hah, why are all the magic implementors unemployed? (well, technically i'm still a graduate student)

Because no sane person would code Magic after working 40+ hours a week.

I knew something was wrong with me

[mtgrares]

Code: Select all

Hence alot of musicians are also chess players, magic players, poker players etc. However there is no data that conclusively proves this theory.

Yeah it seems that way. I tried to get interested in chess but it turned out to just be all work and no fun for me. I bought a pretty good texas hold'em simulator but I never could get good enough, so poker doesn't click with me either. (Although I wish it would, it would be fun to write an online poker bot but I have no idea how to.) Programming just comes pretty easy to me and I say you should always do what is easy. It is ok not to always bang your head against the wall.

By the way, I don't listen to much jazz anymore, I guess I got tired of it. Just today I listened to 40's WW II songs, "Drinking Rum and Cola-cola", "Mister Five by Five", "Jingle Jangle Jingle". It is a little wierd but very upbeat. I'm more into instrumental rock guitar, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Michael Scott Batio, Paul Gilbert are the best. Yngwie is good but I don't listen much to him. For Christmas I'm getting a DVD that shows Vai playing a 3-neck guitar, it is the craziest thing I've ever seen. And watching Jimi Hendrix live on DVD is great to, he sure does make alot of noise, lol.

[mtgrares]

frwololo,

Freeware programmers like us (and Incantus) are just insane in the membrane. I can't even count how many hours I've spent on MTG Forge. MTG Forge has over 1meg of Java code, I think it is longer than War and Peace.

[Rob Cashwalker]

On the subject of magic and musicians:

I did lights for a Battle of the Bands last Saturday. After I had finished setting up, I had some free time to mill about. I noticed for the first time, that there were a few band members sitting in a corner playing magic. Well, I just happened to have my set of core-set pre-cons out there because I was teaching my tech assistant. I grabbed my decks, and while we were waiting to get started, we had a 4-way multiplayer game. The decks were a mill deck, a bant control deck with exalted, an elf deck, and the 8th Ed white pre-con (lifeboost, I think). The mill deck won....

It was my first multiplayer game, and also the first time I played with complete strangers in a non-tournament environment. We played together very well.

rares -

War and Peace didn't repeat entire sections of its text like MTGForge has for each card that is hard-coded.......

[GandoTheBard]

Rob sounds like a blast. I have had some great multiplayer games with some of the best multiplayer players in nyc. Late night at NG when all the nondiehards went home was often an excuse to play 2headed giant sealed or draft. Also on MODO you can grab some pretty good multiplayer games in Prismatic (5c), Prismatic Singleton and various other 2hg, emperor or chaos formats. My Modo collection is mostly geared towards playing these formats really. Though by now it is sadly out of date Im afraid.

Btw War and Peace was also written without benefit of typewriter, or computer.