So, I got here over five months ago now. I had been planning it since I got here. My favorite variety of German beer is Koelsh. This is from someone who used to brew his own so that means something. Five months of hard work in a foreign country - non-stop. Christmas was spent here. We Skyped with our families. We watched them unwrap gifts. We even saw our cat. Our vacation was set to go on the 27th. We'd go to Cologne, where they make my favorite beer. I would spend the next several days with my wife enjoying the best of what Germany had to offer. Well, the morning of the 26th, I was in the emergency room having electrolytes pumped into the soft side of my elbow. I had come down with an acute case ofgastroenteritis. I had a stomach virus.

On the 27th, I sure as hell wasn't staying home. Despite the stomach aches, despite the need to constantly use the restroom, I was on that train to Cologne. Actually, it was three trains. The first goes to Weimar where we caught the connection to the Frankfurt airport. There we caught the train south along the Rhein to Frankfurt. You know, if I hadn't been trying not to hurl, the Rhein would have been really pretty. The river carved out a path through the hills. Today, there are vineyards all along and olds castles dot the landscape. We get there. We check into the Marriot. I take a nap. My dinner is cut short by inability to feel comfortable eating lettuce.

Over the four nights we spent in Cologne, I did, gradually, feel better. It was not, however, the beer tasting vacation I had been waiting for. It wasn't until our last night there that I really felt safe enjoying real food and real drink. Let me tell you, it's hard to find food that agrees with an upset stomach in Germany - really hard. Germans seem to believe there are three food groups: pork, potatoes and beer. Honestly, I think I would have felt much better if I had just decided to get drunk the whole time.

Cologne is a city that is almost entirely new. The reason is that, like many major cities in Germany, it was basically rubble at the end of World War II. Interestingly, the allied bombers were very careful not to destroy the Dom - Cologne's absolutely incredible Cathedral. It took them eight hundred years to build the place. Now that's some long term thinking like we just don't have in the US. It was hard for me to think about the kind of mentality required to devote yourself to working on a building that wouldn't be finished in yours, your children's or your children's children's lifetimes.

Some friends back from Winston-Salem visited us while were there. It was really nice seeing them. It also reminded me a lot of what all we had left behind. I do not begrudge my current place - I am grateful for it. However, it can be very hard to see what we left behind. Our life before was very good. I hope that we end up somewhere as nice and with such very nice people.

The return trip was difficult. The train from Cologne to Frankfurt was an ICE and was travelling at high speed. We were definitely travelling faster than I ever had on the ground. We had to catch a connection from the Frankfurt airport to the Frankfurt central train station. It was late. This made us late for the train to Weimar. This meant we were caught in the failure of the German rail system. You see, northern Germany was experiencing a sudden snow storm. We were initially rescheduled to take a train heading towards Berlin. Part way through, we'd catch a connection back south towards Weimar. Well, the rail to Berlin had gotten snowed under. While the train showed up on time, it wasn't allowed to leave. So we went back and they gave us tickets for another train to Weimar. This was a very small train. Thing is, everyone who had been going to Berlin got put on this train - in addition to all the normal passengers. We spent two and a half hours sitting on our suitcase on this train. Nicely, at Weimar, our last train to Jena was on time.

We got to Jena at 2:30 pm. We got home at about 3. Thing is, it was New Year's Eve and the only grocery still open was a good walk away and closed at four then. Facing hunger, we made the journey in record time. The damned German rail system doesn't know just what bad is. We were rained on in freezing temperatures the whole way.

We're home in Jena now and have plenty to eat. Thankfully, I believe the stores are open tomorrow. If not, well, who knows. It's odd, saying "home in Jena". Six time zones away from anything we recognize (except for the McDonalds in the town center) and finding the very basics of life to be foreign, this is currently our home. I know we'll make it. I know this is good for my career. Heck, I'm in the best group in my field. This job pretty much ensures my future. Sometimes, I think I might trade it for being back in WS. To be back with all our friends, to be living the life we had spent so much time investing in, well, it would be wonderful. However, I know that if we had held on there, we would be slowly losing. Our friends would leave. They would have other opportunities. Eventually, there would be just a few holdouts holding onto a life that was no longer there.

I know now that I am ready, as soon as possible, to take a permanent position. I am ready for a nice cushy faculty position at a teaching institution. I am ready for a place where we can settle. I am enjoying my time here in Germany. Heck, who can complain at a temporary job that allows you to travel the world (and I mean eventually, the whole world) that also sets you up as one of the best in your field? I can't. However, I can learn from it. While I will always have a desire to travel and explore and see new things (and I will), I know that I also want somewhere to really call home.

My parents never had that. They had to move all over the country and they spent the most time in a place they never really wanted to live. Turns out, when they left, they left more than they ever thought. Personally, I left my childhood there in Houston, TX. Before my biggest step in life had been to look at everything I had in life and give it up for another to be happy. Now I set about seeing what I want and working on what needs to happen in order for that to happen.

It is a fitting struggle that I face. I am grateful for it. I could not ask for more.

Tomorrow we're heading for Cologne. It's our first real vacation since we got to Europe. We'll be there through the 31st. When we return, we'll be putting up the pictures like I have with Jena and Hanover. I'll then post the link.

My wife is asleep on the couch next to me right now. We've been in Germany almost five full months. There have been many things I have learned since I got here, but perhaps the most important are these. German food is bland and I mean really bland. In fact, German beer is bland. There I said it. German beer is bland. Bland, bland, bland. All German beers taste the same. They taste like a moderately well made lager. In other words, bland. I've also learned the most important thing in the world to me is asleep on the couch right now. I understood this to be true before, but I didn't feel it the way I do now. For the first time in my life, I will not be seeing extended family over Christmas. Heck, here, it is Christmas and there is no extended family in sight. Turns out, we couldn't afford to go to the states.

In many ways, I am relieved. First, I hate travelling. The further the journey the more I hate it. You get where you are going and everyone just assumes you went through nothing. However, it's really a miserable experience. Airports are misery. No-one would argue with me there. Driving is worse. In the states, I was always afraid of being run down by an 18-wheeler. Here, if I was driving, I would be afraid of a bicyclist deciding his best route would be right in front of me. I'm just fine walking, thank you very much. At least on my own two feet, I can dodge out of the way of crazy cyclists and truck drivers.

However, I am not writing this blog to discuss what I've learned nor my distaste of travel. I feel like there is something more to be discussed, yet I don't know what it is. I have devoted myself, as a physicist, to the very mysteries of the universe for over a decade and while I have learned a great many useful skills that make me quite employable, I have not found what I have been looking for. Without commenting on the value of belief, I can honestly say, I have none. Some might accuse me of atheism or believing in science, but they would be wrong. My lack of belief in God does not make me believe otherwise.

It's fundamental that I cannot deny who or what I am. I am just as any other poor sod. I have no deep insight into the mysteries that lay beyond human comprehension. On a different level, I am quite lucky. I was born to an upper-middle class family in the United States. I received a good education. I have had the freedom to explore my own abilities. Despite all that, I cam very much in awe of people who have much less than I do - and some who have far more than I do.

I perceive faith as a grand gift. Perhaps it is a divine gift. To believe, fervently, in something. To feel the sense of truth. To feel that you understand what is right. I envy these things. I am left in darkness, ever wondering. I am not elitist in this. I do not see, as some do, that belief is a refuge for those of low intellect. I know my father, a man of unshakable faith, yet also of incredible intellectual merit. I should state now, my father is a Methodist minister. I cannot offer any idea which describes him of lesser capability in any respect than myself, and he has faith. I envy his faith. I envy his self assuredness. When he walks into a room, he knows he is there to do God's work.

I have no such feeling. When I enter a room, so to speak, I carry with me only my own belief in my own abilities. As one who has no faith, I must admit, I am jealous of those who have faith. I know atheists who are of as strong a conviction as my father. I am jealous of them too. I am possessed of many virtues: intellect, guile, stamina, even unnormal strength in the face of adversity. However, I do not have faith. Every where I go, I walk there alone. I do not walk assured that my opponents are on their own either nor do I feel I have someone on my side. If I walk into a room with you, I have no idea what to expect.

Sometimes, I have no idea what to expect of myself. If anything, I write on this blog my own feelings. I should not fear to write this, yet I do. I am always afraid of who I am and where I am going. While I am so far quite successful in my endeavors, I am never possessed of confidence. Writing this, I think to myself, what a self-indulgence this is. However, I think at the end of this, there is one thing I have learned. I know that I am happier that my wife is near me, even if asleep on the couch. Perhaps I have been looking in the wrong places. I look to my right and I see my happiness.

I know that I am having a Merry Christmas. I hope you are, or will, too.

So, I've heard whisperings from all around that Braid is a really excellent game. What with the sale from Steam, I decided I look at some screen shots. As far as I can tell, Braid seems to be an homage to old NES and SNES games. I recognize Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros. and various other classic games. Was that supposed to be the point?

It's noticeably warmer here in Jena than it was over the weekend. Saturday, the temperature stayed in the 2 or 3 F range. We had to do some grocery shopping and that was just plain miserable. Other than that, we didn't leave the apartment the whole weekend. Instead, I tried out Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul (often referred to as OOO). If you don't know, it's a mod for Oblivion that changes many facets of the game, introduces tons of new monsters and equipment and greatly ups the challenge. It makes a number of changes and creates a substantively different game. The quests are basically the same. When you have to retrieve an amulet to get a recommendation to the Arcane University, you still have to retrieve the amulet. What's different is the difficulty of the creatures and their variety in between.

At low levels, the fights are much more challenging. There are places you just shouldn't go. You also level much slower. What I have ended up with is a game that superficially resembles Oblivion but is definitely a different game. I don't know what I think of it yet. The beginning is awefully slow. You basically can't do anything except one tower with goblins in it. There is also not a good way to know what areas are more or less difficult. I guess this mod is running into one of the faults of Oblivion - how generically the world was made.

In Oblivion, the same places that would have Dremora lords at high levels have scamps at low levels. Bandits and Marauders were paired to be less powerful than you were. Low intellegence monsters such as wolves and rats would get replaced by low intelligence monsters like trolls, bears and minotaurs as you gained levels. This natural scaling meant that Bethesda could genericize their environments. In Morrowind, they had the environment tell you how challenging the encounters would be. A dark cave with lava flows and spooky music was often the residence of various minions of Dagoth Ur. Daedra inhabited demonic looking ruins. Simple caves were often filled with bandits, easily defeated at lower levels. If you walked into the wrong place - there was a good chance you'd figure it out before you died.

OOO points out the inadequecy of this development in Oblivion. I often felt that Oblivion lacked the feeling of achievement as any task could be accomplished as easily at level 2 as at level 32. In fact, most encounters were far easier at level 2 than at level 32 (the ogres scaled faster than you at those levels and NPCs became worthless as allies). With a mod such as OOO, there are very few hints that suggest the relevent difficulty.It does make me think, perhaps this levelled encounters system was designed to save work. With the difficulty of developing games at the level of graphics we expect these days, it becomes simpler to have more generic environments. Once you make that step, it becomes natural to develop scaling encounters so that players don't feel cheated by walking into a seemingly safe place only to have Sithis show up in person and smite the player.

This makes me wonder what we're doing to games when demanding such a high level of graphics. Are we dooming ourselves to more generic games? While the execution was terrible, there was vastly more variety and a range of difficulty levels in Two Worlds. While the game was largely difficult to follow and the plot just plain pathetic, by the end of the game, I really felt like I had built the character towards the end. This also makes me wonder, what would I pay for a game of the quality and scale of Oblivion, but with the variety and uniqueness of some of the true rpg greats like the Baldur's Gate series. Would you be willing to pay more for such a game? Would you be willing to wait longer for it's release? If I had to pay $120 for a game like that, a game that is of that quality and variety, I think I might. If I got a game like that with as much replay value and as good a story as I found in Baldur's Gate II, I'm almost sure I would. What about you?

I'm really pleased with my new computer at work. Between the two monitors, I have more than 3500x1200 pixels screen space to work in. I have 8 gigs of memory to invert matrices with (just enough) and the hardware is generally high end. What I don't like is the management system for our computers. Lesson number one in providing computing to a large organization - do not, under any circumstances, use a central data server that every local machine must mount to be used. In theory, when this system works, it means you can access your own account from every computer available. In practice, it means your computer constantly needs to be connected to this other machine. It means that every hour the file server is down, you have lost N man-hours where N is the number of employees on the system. We have about a hundred people working on our file server which went down for two hours recently. That means we lost 200 man-hours of work. Further, if your network infrastructure isn't working perfectly, there will be periodic problems further cutting into productivity. Three times today I have had to get someone with root access to remount the /home space when my machine froze due to a communication issue with the file server (of course). It's absolutely infuriating.

...but I clicked on gamespot's top right link on What Not to Buy at Walmart. Now, I have become used to moneywatch.bnet.com having some of the worst content on the internet but this time it really seems off kilter. There are three items they say not to buy at Walmart. I find issue with two of them.

The first entry is High End Electronics. I will now provide a quote from the article:

So if you want to splurge on atop-of-the-line televisionor digital SLR camera — and get the accompanying level of service and accessories — you'll want to visit a specialty electronics store. Best Buy (BBY), for example, has a customer support team (the Geek Squad) capable of explaining why, for instance, you may need a television with several HDMI ports.

I'll start with the obvious. The geek squad generally knows absolutely nothing. I have regularly asked these "specialists" just what connections are available on various products and they have no clue. Further, the geek squad only exists to milk money out of you. One example, the Geek Squad special on the xbox 360 included a non-cumulative 1-year BestBuy provided warranty for the hardware (while you get a three year warranty from MS) and provided all the updates preloaded. For this "service", you would be charged an extra eighty dollars. In other words, if you are too dumb to realize the added warranty is useless and you're too lazy to spend the twenty minutes downloading updates yourself, you can possibly feel like you are getting your money's worth for the extra eighty dollars. Finally, I am particularly irate at the statement, "capable of explaining why, for instance, you may need a television with several HDMI ports." What the article is saying is that we're too dumb to realize what we do need and it's a good idea to trust the guy selling me the product on what I desire. There's just a slight conflict of interest there.

However, this was not the most ridiculous part to me. I will quote from the section on Books:

This year, Walmart slashed prices aggressively to establish itself as the low-price leader for best-selling books. The store cut the cost of popular novels such as Stephen King'sUnder the Domeby 70 percent to $13.99, sparking a price war with Amazon (AMZN).

Let's apply a little logic to the above statement. If Walmart "cutthe cost of popular novels such as Stephen King'sUnder the Domeby 70 percent to $13.99", that means the books was originally selling for noticeably over $40. While I realize the price of new hardcovers have reached pretty high, I find the idea that the original cost is well past the $40 mark to be just plain dumb. Amazon's lists the starting price at $35 dollars, marked down to $14. I find it amazing that a website named moneywatch is trying to push the price inflation message on us. The only reason these books are given a price this high is so stores can give "deep discounts" to convince us we're getting a good deal.

Aside from the crap journalism (still convincing me that I won't pay for internet news sites), I found the novel they mentioned even more offensive. I looked up Under the Dome on Amazon. Evidently, Stephen King had the brilliant and *unique* idea to write a story about a town that suddenly has a glass dome placed over it. I realize Stephen King has managed to take his poop and convince people to publish it, but still, I think I heard of this town. It's called Springfield and Homer lives there. He dumped a tower of pig-poop in the lake pushing the local ecology over the edge. A crazed head of the EPA then put a glass dome over the town. In fact, there was a whole movie about it. You might have heard of it: The Simpsons Movie. I realize that some of the best stories are the ones that get retold over and over again, but what made the giant glass dome good in the Simpsons was how ridiculous it was.

I was pulled over today by the German police. Here's the thing, I'm a pedestrian. Here, in a small town, they catch you for J-walking. So beware. If you are in Germany, don't J-walk. The guy let us off from the five euro per person J-walking fee.

I'm still thinking about college. My school had a month in January where you would work on special projects. It would be four weeks on intensively working on one thing. My junior year, I worked a little bit with robotics. One of the computer science professors had some small robots. They had self powered wheels, a few infrared distance detectors and a control board with a little processor and 32 KB of memory - no hard drive. Programming these little buggers was an exercise in learning to live with less. Today, I write codes that can be GB in size by themselves and require many times that in memory to run. I had to code everything this little robot did with only 32 KB of memory. Of course, we didn't store any external data. Effectively, we programmed the robot to have no "memory" of it's environment, to only act instinctively. We programmed to it go through a maze - only, the maze needed to obey certain rules. The maze could only have right turns and it could have no loops. Otherwise, the robot would run into a wall at a bad angle or could get caught running in circles. It is possible we could have worked in a lower level language than the C we were using, but we had limited time and it was understood that the project was not so grand in design.

It got me thinking at the time about where I thought computing would be going. It's been clear that computers and the internet have revolutionized our lives. That you are reading this blog is a great example. However, it was not clear to me then just how much specialized computing would change our lives. I'll put here a list:

automobiles

cell phones

mp3 players

air conditioners

GPS

DVD players

security systems

refrigerators

washing machines (and dryers)

dish washers

ovens and stoves

microwave ovens

locks

classroom polling systems

restaurant book-keeping

All these items have been created or recently been enhanced through the use of specialized computing. Rather than some large machine that controls your whole house (as envisioned perhaps at Disney), it turns out that we put microchips in all kinds of things these days. A mechanic can connect a wire to your car and a screen will tell him what needs to be fixed. I have seen washing machines that calculate how much time is still required for the clothing to get clean. Waiters take lunch orders by entering them into small handhelds which tabulate the bill and automatically relate the information to the kitchen. The other items are more obvious.

We've gone through and experienced one computer related revolution. We all know how much better our lives are for the existence of PCs and laptops, for being able to access the internet. I think, however, we are just at the beginning of a very different computing revolution. You see, these kinds of dedicated computers, small cheap devices meant to better enable one particular task, have only been around for a short time. Further, it's a large divergence from the majority of computer development over the last fifty years.

In Star Trek, the spaceships generally have a computer which has ultimate control over the whole vessel. It controls everything from doors to the reactor core. This is where I think ideas of the future of computing have gone wrong. Imagine such a system getting a virus or having a hardware failure - it would be catastrophic. On the other hand, we are already using computers in specialized tasks - where we only have as much computing power as absolutely required. If one computer fails, all the other devices we use continue to function. It's also much easier to replace a cell phone than every piece of electronics you own all at once. I think this trend will continue and grow. I think we will be cheap, highly specialized computers applied in more ways than I can currently imagine - and I can imagine a lot. It makes me think, maybe that experience I had with making my robot's mind fit in only 32 KB was good training for the direction where the computer industry will be seeing the most growth.

So back in the day, I got myself a degree in computer science. When I graduated, Windows XP was still fairly new and most people were using Pentium IVs or some form of these (at the time) cheaper AMD chips. 64 bit chips were only discussed in the computer science community at the time. In my computer architecture class, we studied chip design - particularly the instruction sets.

For those who aren't tech nerds, an instruction set is sum total of all the unique commands that can be run on a processor. They can range from simple commands such as *get* which retrieves a data item (called a word) to addition, multiplication and many other sets of instructions. An instruction is built from logical operators like *or* and *and*. An *or* statement is true if either option a or option b is true and returns false only if a and b are false. An *and* statement is true if both option a and option b are true but returns false if either or both are false. Anyhow, that's getting into the nitty gritty. Around this time were two main design philosophies: Pipeline and RISC.

The pipeline philosophy was about having as many instructions running at one time as possible. This would mean you spend your chip space on having a vast array of instructions that cover everything you'd possibly want to do. The instructions would have many steps and you would start the new instruction before the old one had finished. You would measure throughput (instructions finished per second) and try to maximize this. Certain functions which required multiple simple instructions would get specialized streamlined instruction paths. It is the cutting edge of using every little trick in the book. There are many popular examples of this design philosophy. The x86 architecture is perhaps the most famous. IBM put out the 386 and 486 chips which had these long pipelines and vast instructions sets. Of course, this design essentially became the basis for Pentium chips which vastly sped up computing power when they made certain developments related to clock speed (Mhz and Ghz). These chips are by far the most popular and commercially successful. Even todays dual core chips are mostly pipeline based.

The other design philosophy was RISC which meant reduced instruction set. This philosophy was based on the idea chip space is valuable. Rather than spend it on special instructions that rarely get used and a long pipeline, it should be spent on storage space. You see, a computer chip needs registers where it stores data it is currently working on. If you had a huge instruction set, you had little room on your chip for registers. That means you spend more time waiting to pull data from memory. It is worth nothing, on average, it would take twenty clock cycles (twenty times the time to execute a single instruction in a full pipeline) to retrieve a data item for one register. So this was the plan, spend as little chip space on instructions as possible and put as many registers on the chip as you can. In this way, you spend less time waiting for data to show up - that means more time executing useful instructions.

The natural question comes then as to which philosophy is better: pipeline or RISC? As always, the answer is, it depends. Today, the major leaps in chip design have been in moving up clock speed and reducing the size of integrated circuits. Smaller ICs mean things take up less space which in turn means a smaller footprint on the chip space. Given this, it seems better to go with the pipeline philosophy - a kind of "have your cake and eat it too" mentality. You get all those instructions and you still get lots of registers. Also, the large pipeline and vast array of instructions are very useful for multitasking and graphics based work. It would be easy to conclude that based on recent developments and trends that RISC was a good idea but today we are advanced enough to do away with such simple systems (I hear a million tech nerd voices scream from a distance and then go suddenly silent...)

The argument is still not settled here though. Scientific computation rarely needs a vast array of instructions - particularly when most operations are simple addition and subtraction. Of course, scientific computing hasn't driven the computer industry for a very long time - games have. Still yet, we may soon hit problems with the pipeline philosophy. We've managed to shrink integrated circuits by orders of magnitude. But we've started to hit some physical limits and we're quickly approaching more physical limits). We have made integrated circuits so small and so fast that they build up enough heat during the course of one cycle localized so finely that the IC loses functionality. We are literally looking at strips of material on the order of ten atoms thick. We are hitting other issues as well. As we devise more demanding tasks for our computers to handle, we may no longer have such freedom with chip space. Lately, we have moved towards multicore processors to find speed ups. This form of "parallel processing" means the chip space is being further and further divided up. Our silicon real estate is again rising in value. With out amazing breakthroughs that can allow us to design circuits at the almost atomic level, we will not be able to improve computers the way we have in the past. The cell processor could be the first sign that we may well need to return to a RISC architecture so we can have enough registers (the voices are quiet, but still there, perhaps).

I can't truly predict what happens, but we may see a return to an old philosophy is computing design.

EDIT: Man_Hammer brought to my attention that I have been using the wrong word. It should be RISC rather than RISK. I think I've fixed this now throughout the blog. Also, I should point out that while I use the words RISC and pipeline to refer to philosophies in computer design, they do also refer to very specific ideas. RISC is a very specific instruction set. A pipeline is a mechanism to speed up computations by having multiple instructions running at the same time. I should also point out that the specific RISC instruction set has a pipeline - just a small one. In this blog, I am only using these words to refer to the base ideas of computer design. We will literally never see a return to the specific RISC instruction set nor will we ever again be without a pipeline in processors.

I'm no expert on Japanese culture but I think this game represents perfectly the experience I've had with oddball Japanese culture. Particularly, check out the video. This is so far beyond Katamari...

We got new chairs at work. They're supposed to have allkinds of ways toadjust them. Unfortunately, it's alittle too complicated for someone like me.

The New York Times did a review of Borderlands. I guess this is what the "games as art" crowd always wanted - to be taken seriously. Hope it works out as well as desired. I'm guessing it won't.

Evidently, I am a loser because I don't know how to regularize the Laplacian at r=0.

I saw this coming a mile away. Sony saw all that monthly, regular, dependable cash M$ was getting off of LIVE and decided they want some of that. Thing is, there isn't a way they can do it effectively and not upset customers now. Either 1, the extra services added will not be meaningful to gamers and they won't make any money off of it or 2, they will be meaningful and there will be PS3 owners upset because free online service was one of the benefits they bought a PS3 for. It's kind of odd, really, despite the gains in momentum they've made with the slim, they're still making sophmore mistakes - business wise. If they want their games division to turn a profit, they should start thinking about the PS4 right now and remember that being first out makes a big difference.

So I picked up Mass Effect for the PC. I've now played in on both PC and the 360. I've had several thoughts on it so far. On the PC, the graphics can be noticeably better. This is not surprising. For controls, I feel like they did more damage than good. They somehow made the Mako more difficult to pilot - which I didn't think was possible. On the other hand, they made combat with the Mako much easier. The inclusion of a true zoom targeting feature means you really can lay down long distance fire. I also find the controls for the character more difficult. This may only be a problem with using a keyboard but there seems to be no way to configure the buttons so that one can easily get to the rush key. Also, it's easy to forget what to press for using health packs and grenades. They aren't often important enough to remember.

They advertised fixing load times by spreading them out over the gameplay. This has an annoying effect that when a scene isn't always entirely loaded, you can get some noticeable slowdown on frame rate during combat. I prefer longer load times. I kind of saw this coming though. People always complain about load times and really, there's nothing that can be done about this. The data has to load at some point or another.

Overall, I think they took a great game made for console and used poor judgement when moving it to PC. The result is still a great game - but still with many issues. I wonder if this is the first sign of EA's influence on Bioware. If so, I weep, because this fulfills the pattern. EA takes over a great company and pushes them into failure. I get the impression they're doing the same with Dragon Age - what with all the costly downloadable content at opening and the feelings of incompleteness it inspired in players. It's sad because Bioware has been one of the bastions of well-made western style rpgs. To me, it's as bad as when EA took over Origin.