Pytables/Numpy: lesson learned

Today's PyTables/NumPy lesson that I learned the hard way (i.e. through time wasted): When you use the __getitem__ method from a PyTables Table, and you pass an integer, you don't get back a record array. You get back the same thing as if you pass an integer to the __getitem__ method of a record array - namely a numpy.void instance, which is used presumably because NumPy doesn't know what to call whatever you have stashed together in one record.

Super Size Suckage

Well, here's an uncontroversial post. I saw Super Size Me the other day. And I thought it sucked.

I'm not the first to do so, but that's what I have to say today. So I might as well detail my criticism a bit more, to make it more constructive.

The premise itself is kind of funny, and the main reason I watched it was to see how much weight this guy could gain in a month. Little did I know that this was to be the subject matter of only thirty percent of the movie, whereas the rest... sucked.

My experience based on previous such documentaries (Michael Moore, i'm looking at you) is that when the documentary maker has a very specific axe to grind, you just end up disbelieving everything that is presented, and you're actually trying to find flaws with the presentation. This is what I ended up doing. And the reason was that I very quickly got a lasting impression of the documentary film maker, which can be summed up thusly: "My vegan girlfriend hates McDonalds and I want to make a documentary. Why not kill two birds with one stone?" Seriously, that girlfriend should have been left out of the movie. I cringed everytime she said anything, because it was always about how superior organic and vegan food was. In the end, when she said she would 'cleanse' Morgan's post-experiment system with her special vegan diet, I cringed doubly.

Now, the above was mostly a gut reaction, but it is symptomatic of one of the biggest problems with this movie: It's not clear what in the world it's trying to say.

On the one hand, it seems to say that McDonalds is bad, and that's the take-home message. On the other hand, it seems to say that organic? vegan? food is the best. And then on the third hand, one premise of the movie seems to be that a guy is trying to eat as much fast food as he can for a month and see how that affects his health and well-being.

Then you might say, 'Well, all of these are tied together and they make up one coherent story'. But they don't. First of all, McDonalds being bad is not the same as vegan and organic food being the best. In fact, I think you will find a lot of people who would agree with the former (to some extent) but not to the latter statement. Second of all, you don't prove that McDonalds is bad by EATING TWICE AS MANY CALORIES PER DAY AS RECOMMENDED. That just proves you're bad at cause and effect.

A much better demonstration that eating McDonalds is bad for you would be to eat the recommended number of calories each day, but eating only McDonalds. If he had eaten five thousand calories worth of vegan food each day he would also gain weight.

As for the 'results' of this exercise, they're pretty much worthless as scientific facts towards demonstrating how McDonalds is bad for you. Very few of the changes that happened to his body can be said to be due solely to the fact that he was eating McDonalds and not to the fact that he was eating way too much. And some of them were pretty subjective. "I feel horrible". "My arms are twitching due to all the sugar". How do you know that?? "My sex life went down". Well, when you're binging on McDonalds food and have a vegan girlfriend, what do you expect?

Also, the most interesting result - how fat he got, was pretty underwhelming. He gained around ten kilograms, and I hardly noticed him getting fatter.

Another underwhelming result was how many times he had been asked whether he wanted a super-size menu, which was something he touted in the beginning of the movie. That was presented as one of the 'dramatic post-movie facts', you know - the ones that accompany some picture of whatever illustrates the fact best at the movie's end. He ate ninety times at McDonalds during this month, and was asked about a super-size menu nine times. Out of ninety. That's ten percent. I'm underwhelmed.

In addition to these things, you had the stock-standard Michael Moore-ish strawmen interviews, tying together unrelated facts to make a point, etc. that generally simply helped discredit the maker of the movie.

In short, I wish documentaries like this didn't get so much attention. I want to be on the right side of issues like this, but when the people who are supposedly on the right side use the same dirty tricks as those we claim to be fighting against, the lines get blurred. If what is presented is truly something that we should be shocked and appalled about, the facts will speak for themselves, and we don't need some dude or his vegan girlfriend to mix them together into a milkshake of dubious factual value.

Scheduling

It's weird how certain concepts simply stay out of your field of 'conceivability', so to speak, until they suddenly pop in and you feel silly for not considering them earlier.

Setting up a schedule for myself has been such a concept. I have read about the concept and its advantages several times before, but for some reason I have just shrugged and never considered it seriously. And I don't really know why - that's the paradox of gestalt shifts - once you have shifted, you're unable to see the reasoning behind your old view (unless you have written it down, or something like that).

I believe that perhaps part of the reason I have been reluctant to set up a schedule is my slightly irregular sleeping habits. I have thought it more important to be rested than to wake up at a certain time. And I still do - working ten hours at sixty percent is worse than working eight at ninety. And my brain is really sensitive to this. It's like sleeping badly puts some kind of insulator between the synapses so they're unable to fire properly.

However, there are a couple of reasons I presently have for willing to try out a schedule nonetheless:

If it turns out that I'm unable to function properly because I am determined to wake up at a certain time, I could always wait with setting up the schedule until morning the same day. That way, I know how much time I have for disposal.

However, I presently have another theory: That my irregular sleep is in part due to my not having any obligations to get up in the morning. Currently, I have a research position, which means I can pretty much come and go as I want. Could this have a negative effect? Perhaps if I approach it more like I would a regular job, my brain somehow would get more 'incentive' to sleep properly during the night? You see, my problem isn't that I cannot fall asleep in the evening - I usually do pretty quickly. Rather, the problem is that my sleep is light and not 'restful' enough. Also, I usually wake up before time, and if I get up at that time, I will be tired.

In other words, this is going to be an experiment. I will schedule the following day the night before, including a time at which I wake up and a time at which I go to bed, and everything in between. Naturally, it will be impossible to follow such a schedule to the point - unexpected events do occur, of course, and there are some tasks which are hard to approximate in terms of time needed for completion. However, those things I believe will come with experience. The first hurdle is actually following through with it.

Game review: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Despite all my wishes to be a productive person, sometimes I somehow end up playing some computer or video game. Recently I have been playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, and thought I'd just briefly review it.

First off, I don't like assigning one number to games, since the quality of a game can have many dimensions. SO I'm just going to write what I like about the game and what I don't like.

The premise

The game I played is for Nintendo DS, and it's a kind of point-and-click mystery solving and courtroom game, which to my knowledge is pretty unique in the market. It's animated with semi-moving anime frames. You play as Phoenix Wright, a lawyer straight out of law school, as he takes on his first cases as a defense attorney. The first mission is a simple trial, where you have to pick the witnesses testimonies apart, pressing every point and using evidence to bring to light contradictions in their testimonies. Later, you also play the role of the evidence-gatherer, which you usually do much better than the local police force anyway. There are several clashes with the arch-nemesis, Miles Edgeworth (who has later gotten games of his own). This game is the first in a series of several.

The good

Phoenix Wright (the character) is pretty awesome, although playing the game I got a different impression from what I had from all the internet memes about him.

Y'know - these ones.

He's a bit more insecure than I thought prior to playing. But I like the character, and Miles is also pretty cool, although sometimes I wish the anime industry would find another archetype than the 'brooding dark-haired guy' to be the cool dude.

The trials are hilarious and very entertaining. Whenever you manage to point out a contradiction and cool music starts playing, you feel like being a defense attorney would be the coolest job in the world. There's plenty of humor there, and especially if you're geared towards Japanese-style humor, you'll laugh out loud a lot. I did, at least. Most trials are pretty far-fetched in terms of how they are conducted and what is accepted as evidence and so on, but it's not much worse than your average American lawyer show.
Also, I want to mention the 'effects' as a good point of this game. In trial, when the attorneys are making a point, they are punching their fists on the desk in a really cool way. And whenever something 'unexpected' is happening, the effects really help bring this out by changing the music, kind of shaking the screen and in general putting surprised faces on everyone.

The bad

The evidence collection becomes pretty tedious, especially when you have to move through areas in a very slow manner (i.e. you cannot necessarily move from a given area to the area you want to be in - you have to go through all the 'intermediate' areas first).

The both

The music is really great at times (i.e. during the trials) but at other times it can get a bit jarring (i.e. during evidence collection).

The graphics.. honestly, for a game such as this, realistic graphics is by no means something I want. The graphics do a good job without being extravagant.

In summary

Despite the shortcomings of the game (i.e. the evidence collection phase) I would heartily recommend playing it, simply because they have a unique experience to offer: Being an awesome defense attorney who fights injustice and tears down even the most arrogant of prosecutors. Get your OBJECTION!s on and play it!

Manual labor

A couple of times lately I have helped my grandparents do some manual labor (pruning their fruit trees and trimming the hedges).

I don't do much manual labor at home myself. I live in a rented apartment, so I don't have much maintenance to speak of, and my day job mainly consists of programming, which can only be thought of as manual labor if you are a pedant and use the original definition of the word.

But in that case, this is manual labor as well.

 However, whenever I get to do some real manual labor, I think I should do more of it. It's both due to the 'getting to work your body' thing and the 'feeling like you actually did stuff' thing. Together, they give a feeling of wholesomeness.

If and when I ever get a family and/or own a house of my own, I suppose there will be more of this. Until then, I'll just have to help out my grandparents as much as I can.

Dip into finance

Today I attended a lecture by a relatively well-known academic within computational finance (the reason for this is to try to figure out what to do after what I'm currently doing).

I wasn't too familiar with the terms used within finance, so I didn't follow the discussion. In this particular course (where the speaker was a guest lecturer) they seem to use Excel a lot. Probably this is just a particularity of the course level.

One thing that really stood out was that they talked a lot about master theses. Every half hour or so, the lecturer or someone else would say something like "This is probably something that a master student could have as their project." In my field, this very rarely comes up. It made me wonder how it is in other fields. Is it a sign of underabundance of researchers within finance?

After this lecture, I am less opposed to working in finance than I previously was. I asked the lecturer about future prospects based on my own history, and she said I would have very few problems entering quantitative finance in some way - I could perhaps take a couple of courses in finance first. Also, she said that she didn't find working with finance less intellectually stimulating than what she did before (she switched to finance after her Ph.D.).

I suppose what's standing in the way of a career in finance for me is the thought that it is less 'pure' or 'ideal' than what I am currently doing. After all, working with finance is not trying to figure out how the world works. But then again - working in the academic world has made me rethink the validity of stating that I am trying to figure out how the world works. At my institute, at least, it seems to be less and less true the older you get, as grant applications, teaching etc. takes over.

I am still undecided about this. I have to try to gather as much information as possible about the experience of working with something else than what I am currently doing before I make a choice.

Exercising

As mentioned here, I exercise regularly.

"Regularly" in this context means thrice a week, and it also means that I always exercise in the morning, right after waking up and before breakfast. Sometimes I skip exercising, though I shouldn't. Usually that's because I've slept badly (subject for another post!) and don't need more exhaustion. Sometimes it's because I was up late the day before and don't have time to exercise. Sometimes it's a combination (I slept badly, so I woke up late). But these are exceptions.

I exercise for about an hour. I usually listen to two podcasts of my favorite radio show while exercising, and they last for half an hour each.

The exercise is pretty tiring. I start with three repetitions of the following:

• x burpees (the push up + jump up variant), where x is a function of my fitness (Currently x=13).
• Shadowboxing for y seconds, where I typically adjust y so that it takes as long as the burpees do. Currently, y=45 seconds, although the burpees don't take that long, so I have to adjust a little.
• Do one more of both the above points.
• Rest for a couple of minutes.
• The Plank for z seconds, where z=90 the first repetition, z=60 the second repetition, and z=45 the third repetition.
• Rest for a minute or so.

After this, I do one more of the burpee/shadowboxing repetitions, so I do four of those altogether. Summed up, then, I currently do 13x2x4=104 burpees per exercise session. The above takes about thirty-five minutes altogether, including warming up.

After this, I do back and abdominal exercises for about twenty-five minutes, which i think is important when you sit as much during the day as I do. In between these, I do as many pull-ups as I can.

It is an important point for me to be able to exercise without too much hassle, because then I usually never get around to it. The less overhead time, the better. So I prefer to exercise at home using only body-weight. For those of us who are only reasonably fit, that's more than enough. If your goal is to stay fit, not build muscles, there really is no point in doing heavy weight-lifting, IMO. Body-weight exercise will only take you so far, though, so if you want to look really buff, then you should start lifting weights.

Or you can start doing experiments with certain drugs.

When I first started doing burpees, they totally killed me. They're one of the most exhaustive forms of exercise I know, as long as you do a proper jump up and a proper push up each time. So in the beginning, x in the above regime was about two-three. It's nice to see improvement. I am a bit unsure of doing this for a long time, though. Although it's probably better for your legs and back to do burpees than running (for a fixed amount of 'exercise'), it can still be a strain on the joints to do that many jump-ups. So far, though, so good, so I'll keep doing it until it starts hurting!

Anyway - the above regime works all major muscle groups in addition to being good cardio exercise. Combined with healthy eating, and remembering that being hungry for a little while isn't dangerous, you should notice an improvement in how you look and feel after a couple of weeks.

Healthy eating

Staying in shape can be tough when you're a desk-worker like me. I try to regularly exercise three times a week, and since anecdotal evidence suggests that you can't outrun your fork , I also try to eat healthy. 

Which means I won't be able to do this anymore.

I have no zen tips for accomplishing that. But once you start to actually see the contours of those abdominal muscles you thought were dissolved in fatty acids, you start to understand what Kate Moss meant when she said "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels". Not trying to condone anorexia here, obviously. I am currently in no danger of having that condition.

Another thing that has been important for me to keep in mind is that being hungry for an evening isn't dangerous. Going to sleep hungry isn't going to kill you. And usually you're not really hungry either, it's mostly just being half-full and/or bored.

A third important thing for me is not to fail miserably once I fail. As Jillian Michaels said: "Think of your weight loss journey as a car. If you were driving along and got a flat tire, would you slash the other 3 tires and call it a complete loss? No. You would fix that one tire and keep going."

There is one way of thinking within the fitness world that I simply find to be impractical, and that is the thought that you should eat often and eat small meals. The reason I have a problem with this is that it's thinking about food that makes me want to eat. The less I have to think about food during one day, the less I feel the need to eat. Thus, I limit my meals to three a day, and once I have finished one of them, I know that I won't be eating again for a while. And usually my stomach then tells me when it's time again.

Motivational quotes get a lot of heat from the irony generation. But I find them to be useful - they're like someone jerking your shoulder when you're about to fall asleep. Maybe I'll do a compilation of my favorites one day, for the pleasure of all my imaginary readers.

Grading: What is this I don't even

Grading can occasionally be a profound glimpse into the human psyche under pressure.

For instance, some people, when they don't know an answer to a question, they will try to bullshit their way to an answer. This is much easier to pull off with an oral exam. For a written exam.. not so much.

And the thing is, doing this might actually be harmful, for two reasons:

• It might ruin the overall impression of your exam - i.e. if you give a bullshit answer early on, the grader might be slightly predisposed to look less favorably upon the rest of your answers
• It might reveal your ignorance, thus actually giving you a lower grade than you would have gotten if you had just shut up.

Now, the first item above is arguably a problem - what you answer in one part of your exam shouldn't be held against you at another part. However, I think it's inevitable as long as there are humans grading.

The second item above, I'm not so sure is a problem. If some writes a satisfactory answer to a question - containing the bare minimum of what is required, not demonstrating superior understanding but still answering correctly, I might give eighty percent (say) for that question, simply because I must assume that the person knows what they are talking about. However, if that person feels like they haven't given a fulfilling answer, and then starts throwing in stuff they think might be true, then I'm getting a definitive confirmation that this person indeed doesn't know what they are talking about - thus I might actually lower the grade. To me, this makes sense - it's a kind of "innocent until proven guilty". Others take a more liberal stance, saying that as long as the right answer has been written down, it doesn't matter what else is also written.

It is of course important exactly what kind of bullshit has been written - if it's simply information that has no relevance to the question, such as demonstrating your knowledge about the human genome when asked about that of a pig, then I agree that you shouldn't be penalized - you're keeping the bullshit away from the breadbin. However, when the bullshit starts encroaching on the perfectly fine sandwich that is your basic answer, that sandwich, too, will start to smell.

Grading

The last week I've been grading exams for a college-level introductory course to my field for non-scientists. I'm a TA for this course, and so we also have to step up when the time for grading comes.

The grading process is very boring. After doing it for extended periods of time, my mind has been noticeably numbed. However, while grading one starts to notice a couple of things, and those can be interesting.. if you're in that kind of mood.

For instance, how are you supposed to grade an exam? That of course depends on what type it is. This particular exam consisted of fifteen questions, and being an exam on a science course, the answers to the questions were relatively well-defined. However, being a qualitative science exam, there were still a bit of leeway.

Even so, after grading around twenty exams, you start to notice patterns, and you stop reading the answers as carefully as you did in the beginning. Got the formula right? Check. Drew this graph correctly? Check. Included that particular process in the explanation? Oops, missed that one. That's a couple of points off.

How grading makes me feel

When grading previous exams in the same course, I have tried to set up a checklist for each question, and then going through the checklist, giving points for each point contained in the answer. However there are a couple of problems with this approach.

First of all, even though there is a solution provided by the main teacher, the main teacher doesn't really know what his students know, especially for such a low-level course. Therefore, trying to build a checklist based on the solution provided by the teacher will prove to be a bad match when facing actual exams, in the sense that you will typically emphasize stuff that noone knows, or you will emphasize stuff that everyone gets right.

This is why you need a training set. You need to look at a number of exams, going through the answers and identifying which parts separate the wheat from the chaff. And then, ideally, you should go through the same set again, this time using your checklist to actually grade those exams.

That's.. not going to happen. At least not for me. I used to simultaneously grade and build up my checklist, meaning that the first ten-twenty exams probably were a bit off. However! We are two people grading the same exams, so as long as the other person starts at some other point than me, this approach is still pretty sound.

The second problem with the checklist approach is that the checklist doesn't convey enough information. Sometimes, you read an exam and you just know that this person has an excellent command of the material. And sometimes you read an exam and you realize this person has simply memorized the material, not really understanding what's going on. However, the checklist doesn't really differentiate between them, unless you put in some kind of checkpoint that says "Deep understanding: two points".

This could work, and I did something like that the last time I graded. However, this time around, I tried not using a checklist, rather trying to give a more "holistic" number of points for each question. That is, I tried to identify to what degree the person had understood what was going on.

This doesn't always work, since many questions are simply of the "regurgitate what you have learned" type. In those cases i would follow something like a mental checklist still. But some questions require more understanding, and in those cases I felt like this approach was better. Surely, this approach means that someone who answered the exact same thing might end up with a different percentage for that particular question, but since a) the exam is made up of fifteen questions, b) we are two graders and c) you get a discreticized letter grade anyway, I don't think this is a crucial problem.

This post is already pretty long.. I think I will split this grading experience into several posts.

Sailing

Today I went sailing with some friends. I was originally going to do grading, but being invited for sailing is such a rare occurrence (it has never happened before) that I joined.

I enjoyed it a lot. It's a small sailboat, less than 20 feet, with no more room than necessary for the five of us. I mainly stood close to the bow while we were sailing, and I didn't do much in terms of raising and lowering the sails etc., since it was my first time.

I can really recommend sailing if you ever get the opportunity, especially on a small boat like this. It's a good way to learn what the wind does to the boat and sails, and it is interesting to see how you strategically have to move the sails in order to take advantage of the wind. I was also surprised at how straight into the wind it is possible to sail and still make good speed.

It did make me feel a little bit like I would have enjoyed to be an actual sailor on an old large sailing ship, like a frigate. However, I think there is a slight difference in sailing for four hours like we did and sailing for four months like real sailors did. I didn't get scurvy once, for instance.

But that's probably because I brought one of these.

And now it feels like everything is undulating.

Being productive

In my last post, I used the word "productive" as if it's a good thing to be exactly that.

Before I continue, I should clarify what exactly I mean by productive. I think my definition is slightly broader than your average Wall Streeter, but narrower than your average hippie. I mean it not simply as "Earning money", "Creating value", etc., but not simply as "Expanding your mind", neither. Actually, I am going to use those examples as my definition: It's neither of those, but somewhere in the middle. Something like "Working towards one's life goals". Or something.

Anyway. I think it's a Good Thing to be productive. Others, especially in the particular area of the world in which I happen to live, are not so sure. Here, the importance of relaxing and not overworking yourself is stressed. "Noone who is about to die looks back at their lives and wish they had worked more", it is said.

Well, no, probably not. But why on earth should that be the reference point? The time you spend in being in "About to die" mode is probably very small compared to most other modes you're going through. Of course when you're about to die you don't wish you had worked more. You're a sentimental being at that point . You fail to recognize how important working was at earlier stages. How it was working that put food on your table. How working hard earlier in life made you m ore qualified for better and higher life-quality jobs. How working hard at anything makes you a more complete human being. Let me rephrase that idiotic saying: "Noone who is about to enter the job market looks back at their lives and wish they had worked less". And that is a way more important reference point in your life. It basically determines how the rest of your life is going to be.

An early case of workaholism.

The issue I have with the anti-productivity-notion that we have in some parts of the world (which I imagine to be the parts where it's not really necessary to work hard in order to survive) is that those of us who don't agree tend to be a bit stigmatized. A "Workaholic" can indeed be a legitimate term, but when someone uses the word "workaholic" to mean someone who works ten hours a day instead of eight... I get slightly aggravated. Especially if some of that work is at home with loved ones.

Personally, I work a lot because I enjoy it. I enjoy learning and I enjoy developing as a human being. Whenever I just watch random TV shows, I feel like Franklin and Edison are looking down at me with disdain. I can appreciate that many people feel like their spouse/friend/family member's work takes focus away from them, which I under certain circumstances can agree is not a Good Thing. However, if you complain that your partner won't rot his/her brain away watching TV with you every night, then I don't think I agree. Read a book together. Learn to dance. Anything other than being UNproductive. It's what I fear most.

Board game session review: Eclipse

The other day I was invited to a game of Eclipse, a board game about galactic conquest. I thought I might as well do a review of the impressions I got from the session.

This is the first time I've played Eclipse. It was reminiscent of Twilight Imperium in the basic premise - you're playing as a human or alien race and the goal is to ... win. You win by earning lots of victory points, which can be gained in several ways. You have to balance resources and research new technologies in order to stay ahead of your competitors, annnd... the board consists of hexagons.

The similarities end there, and the specific game mechanics is what sets this game apart from Twilight Imperium. Eclipse is turn-based and does not have the "roles" that TI has (the roles system is the same as in Puerto Rico, if you've played that). In Eclipse, all players have access to the same actions. But taking an action requires resources, so in a given round the players may take various numbers of turns, based on how many resources they have. Maintaining control over various star systems also requires resources, so the more systems you control the less turns you can take - unless those systems also provide you with more resources. The hexagons aren't in place as the game begins - well, some are, but most of them you add as you explore. And you cannot necessarily move from one hex to an adjacent one - there must be a connecting wormhole. Since you're allowed to place the hex in the orientation you want, this allows for strategic placement of the hexes - if you're defensive you can close all entries to your own part of the galaxies (except there's always a way through the galaxy center) or if you're aggressive you can create shortcuts to the weakling nextdoors.

Each turn, you can build, upgrade or move your ships, research technologies, reshuffle your resources or explore new systems. At the end of the round (when everyone have taken all of their turns) combat is resolved and resources replenished.

You can play as the mysterious and tech-savvy Hydran Progress...

 I played as a human race (here is a peculiarity, by the way, which I'm not sure I understand the reasoning behind: there are very many human races, all of which have the same racial boni). I was situated between two alien races who were both quite aggressive, while the humans are more balanced. So initially I chose to explore and turtle, leaving only a couple of ways into my territory. I ended up not having to fight once throughout the whole game.

I wasn't really going for a turtling strategy per se, and my exploration was rather aggressive initially. At a pivotal point though, the neighbor who had the easiest way into my territory offered an alliance. This was when he was about to move into his other neighbor's territory, so he didn't want a war on two fronts. I should not have accepted, but not having a very strong military myself, I did. He could easily have turned around and charged me instead, offering the same deal to the other neighbor.

In the end, the lack of fights turned out to be a major show-stopper for my part. You gain victory points from participating, and these victory points are an important part of your complete portfolio, the other two parts being technology victory points and territory victory points. I ended up having victory points from only two out of three of those parts.

I beat one other player, who just committed hara-kiri early on (if he had pulled off what he tried to do he could easily have won, but he lost a crucial battle and thus ended up being dead). All the other players lasted until the end and had plenty of victory points from all three sources.

...or you can play as the extremely interesting Terran Alliance. No really, they're fun once you get to know them.

So what is my impression of the game?

I am not a big fan of this kind of games in general - you know, the kind where resource management and tactics are important, and where it's every man for himself. For some reason, I don't get much joy out of it, just a lot of competitiveness and adrenaline. I prefer more casual games where the outcome is less up to you. However, I must say this is one of the better games of this kind I have played. I liked it better than TI, because it feels almost like the same game but it plays twice as fast. I do wish the diplomatic part of Eclipse would have been deeper than it currently is. Other than that, this game ranks close to the top (of resource management games, of course - there are many board games I would rather play than Eclipse) as of now.

This was just one session, though, and one data point has no significance. I have also just played TI once so the comparison between them is equally invalid. In fact, all I have written above has no error bars whatsoever, so it is useless for any practical purposes.