Grabbag: ``Fully Vaccinated'' and Mini Rogue

Alright, so it has been about two weeks since I had my second dose of Cominaty, so technically I'm now considered ``fully vaccinated''.

Since it is the pandemic after all, there were quite a few things that I had to do after the waiting period was over. The regulations have been updated from Aug 19 as noted in the Ministry of Health home page, replicated here because it will update according to changes.

The key point here to take is that there is going to be differentiated requirements for compliance for those that are ``fully vaccinated'' and those who aren't.

There are a few ways of demonstrating the vaccination status:

1. Status as shown in the HealthHub portal/app (I used this to confirm my vaccination status);
2. Status as shown in the TraceTogether app (I've never used the app, so I cannot attest to this);
3. Reconfiguration of the standalone TraceTogether scanner to beep differently according to vaccination statue (I've not seen this in action yet, since I've not gone out of the apartment yet);
4. Use of Verify via a binary blob ``certificate'' as generated by Notαrise (I tested this with the QR code generated in the document generated by Notαrise); or
5. Show the official document generated by Notαrise which states when the various doses of the vaccines were taken, and more importantly, the effective date from which the person stated was considered ``fully vaccinated''.

Of the whole lot, I only have the TraceTogether token, which is a standalone device that acts as a beacon/eavesdropper to determine close contacts. The token itself is tied to me the digital citizen entity in the grand database of the government, so for the purposes of everything related to COVID-19 contact tracing (and other ``extended'' uses), should be self-contained.

But frankly, I kinda doubt that the decentralised approach towards the whole checking in/out process ensures strong compliance. And so I took the time to actually generate the relevant official certificate and print it out nicely to fit into the A5 paper size. That document comes with a QR code that leads to the Verify site, a fancy single-purpose trusted (in the sense that it is ``obviously'' a government database) server, as well as a JSON document representing various information about the vaccination regime, both of which were generated and sent via email.

Digging through the JSON document reveals that it is a proof-of-concept work for the OpenAttestation project (created and run by GovTech). It claims to be a blockchain framework for handling these kinds of certificate information, providing guarantees of immutability of the data that is stored within, but frankly, I don't buy it as long as the only people who are running it is GovTech itself. Considering that all these certificates are government-issued in the first place, having a blockchain that is hosted by only one single already trusted entity seems like a waste of CPU cycles, and is just a way of checking off someone's KPI list.

I would happily take back my words if the network is allowed to be run distributedly across machines that do not all belong to the government; I wanted to say machines owned by citizens, but I don't think that the restriction is necessary. The key point here is that the blockchain is a means of demonstrating transparency in terms of the transactions that are taking place and the so-called ``state of the world'', and so expanding the participant list to include not-only-the-government would be the right thing to do and justify the additional computational expense from having to maintain a blockchain.

Anyway, that's it for me for the saga that is the COVID-19 vaccination programme. The next step in the ``fun'' is to see if they are going to order booster shots, and what the plans are for re-energising SIN City Inc, which will definitely include some form of relaxation of restrictions and mitigation of the accepted increase in risk as people start to re-contribute to the economy once again.

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In other news, I have finally received my copy of Mini Rogue! I've backed it about a year ago and am glad that it has arrived on schedule. Just look at what it came with!

The Kickstarter Mini Rogue is a rework and prettification of the Mini Rogue micro-game that was created back in 2016. That version was a print-it-yourself-and-play one that was easy to set up, but still had quite a bit of fun in it. The new one is much more professionally produced, coming with its own nicely printed cards and various accessories to make the game complete. The level of support that I had in the Kickstarter gave me upgrades to the tracking board (they were thicker cardboard with inserts cut out to better hold the counter cubes and dice), expansion cards (more emergent gameplay!), self-assembling flat-packing dice throw tray, foil card replacements for the boss monsters (shiny, literally), and even a professionally printed of the original mini-game with updated mechanics as well!

It's basically the off-line version of one of my favourite genres of games---the roguelike. The randomness of events/dungeon evolution combined with the way I would react to them with my player character is just the right amount of emergent behaviour. That it is short is also a draw for the most part because the time investment in the character is just so, without having to worry too much if the current ``build'' affects something that will happen many hours from now; it is the same reason why I like the old DoomRL or the modern Jupiter Hell as compared to say NetHack, AngBand, or Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

``Hardcore'' permadeath mechanics with meta-gameplay isn't something that I enjoy a lot of, because I cannot just start a game without remembering what over-arching thematic update I was going for. This is part of the reason why even though I have Desktop Dungeons, Cogmind, or Sword of the Stars: The Pit, I've never really gotten as deep into them as I was in DoomRL or Jupiter Hell. Life is too short to keep dying [in-game] just to gain enough meta-elements to actually have a better-than-miniscule chance of successfully pulling off a run. If meta was important, I would play something without permadeath mechanics. If I were younger and had way more free time, I probably wouldn't mind the meta-gameplay as much, though I would probably be annoyed if there was no way of grinding out all the benefits from the meta-gameplay to get the absolute beastiest of player characters for use in-game.

Permadeath mechanics with reaction-sensitive elements are also a game-killer for me. That explains why games like Spelunky, Crypt of the NecroDancer, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, Rogue Legacy don't appeal to me as much too. I mean, I have them on Steam/GOG.com, but I just don't feel like playing them as much, as compared to Jupiter Hell.

In other words, I'm saying that despite being a fan of roguelikes, there are certain combinations of mechanics that I do not like as much, and am unlikely to go round looking for them in the future.

Okay, I think that's enough for now. Till the next update.