An Actually Wednesday Zeitgeist

Ah, America the land of the free. The usual suspects have come out saying "no honest, it's the video games" and not LAX GUN CONTROL. In Virginia, you can buy a gun. No questions asked. But that's obviously not the fucking problem. It's the kids pretending to shoot pretend aliens in simulated environments that's at the heart of it. You know, there is no single credible research that has managed to ever link media violence with real world violence. You can find a bunch of biased unscientific ones though.

And I know it sounds like I am defending the game industry - the industry that bought you both Tomb Raider (a game predicated on eyeing a magically proportioned woman in hot-pants) and the prostitutes in Grand Theft Auto that regenerate your Life.

/end rant

More Guns Will Deter Shootings:
Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has a simple solution to future shooting massacres such as the one that ripped apart Virginia Tech university Monday: more guns. "People are a little more cautious if somebody might have a gun there".

In related news: Chimps More Evolved Than Humans. Hard to argue with that.

Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold

Neural Macrosensing: Macrosensing, a concept created by scientist and nanotechnology expert Robert A. Freitas Jr., relates to medical in vivo nanorobotics for the detection of somatic states as well as extrasomatic states, such as sensory data originating outside the body.

Fast Food Ads vs Reality

Um, this is KFC's “Famous Bowl” - reportedly a mixture of mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, cheese, and chicken.

Ad:


Reality:


And I love the review: "there was so much sodium and fat my heart is still cutting in and out – and it’s the arrhythmia of love."

Mystery phrase of the day: saline infusion.
You don't actually want to know.

Thou Shalt Always Kill


How to build a cardboard castle

The End.

Wednesday Monday Zeitgeist

About 10 years behind on lame link spam, so thought I start the week on the right foot.

My apologies to all concerned for Boomshine. Quite addictive, apparently.

I am obsessed with 300. We're going to go see it at Imax on Wednesday night. I think it will be hell-of-cool.

I gave a lecture on Thursday at Swinburne, which was pretty fun. I scrapped the offical talk (which was about XML) and riffed for 60 minutes about things I think are cool.

And we have a gig in a couple of weeks. First practice yesterday. I haven't played the drums since November. Bit clumsy, but other than that was all good.

Speaking of games: Kongregate. It's like YouTube for games. Genius. Made me cry because I never thought of it.

CricInfo - for when you need Cricket rendered into near-realtime 3d.

Zelda Theme Music. ReOrchestrated.

Twitter Vision. Mesmerising.

And, get this: I am Jodee Rich's friend on Twitter. As in One.Tel. How funny is that?

Albono Peacock:


Secret confession: I am addicted to UFC and Pride.

A Risk by any other name

This week I offer for your gaming edification: Ancient Empire's Lux. It's basically Risk played on maps of Ancient civilisations including Egypt, Sumer and Greece. The maps are welll thought out, with nice choke points, and add lots of variety for the Risk aficionado. Apart from that it's just Risk.

And for no extra charge I give you: Orbit. I really like this one, it's quite mesmerising with some great music. There are no instructions, but I think I worked out what to do ...

Thursday Game

This week I have been mostly playing Swords and Sandals: gladitorial combat made real ... if by real you mean amusingly drawn and with some most hilarious sound effects and even more hilariouser music. The song is basically the programmer singing "Glad-iatooor".

You can create a character and jump into the arena ... win battles, earn gold, increase your skills, buy stuff, win more battles.

You get the idea.

Reminds me of Carnage Blender ...

Thursday Game

This week's games is one for the kids: Fizzball by Grubby Games.

Fizzball is a "breakout" game ... you bounce a ball around the screen to collect a bunch of animals and power-ups to clear the level. If you remember Breakout from Atari, you have the idea .... It's cute and heaps of fun.

Wednesday Zeitgeist

Small zeitgeist today because I am a very important corporate executive who shall be in meetings for the next 2 days.

Kill me now. Please.

Universe Map

Crazy-ass computer animation:


Iran leader announces AIDS cure

NASA says Low Earth Orbit is crowded full of junk.

I want one of these so very badly. Hare-brained scheme for this year is to build one myelf. My wife misunderestimates my capacities in this regard.

And if I had one I would certainly play this:


Yes. Watergate Caper. You apparenlty have to break in and steal the secret democratic files. What a jape! I am going to make a game called "AWB Adventure".

Ah, Microsoft.


You are terribly embarrasing:
(via the BlandCanyon via Audrey

ReadyMech: free, flatpack toys for you to print and build.


I LOVE them. LOVE.

Off to my meeting. Damn it.

Thursday Game(s)

This week I have been mostly playing strange space-arcade-strategy games. Galcon and Pax Galaxia. The game play o both of these is pretty much unlike anything I've seen before. Pax Galaxia is wacky, but strangely compelling, you create links from planet to planet and control ebs and flows across the map. It's quite pretty, but in my brief play I couldnt' quite work out what was happening.

Changing the game

At the moment I am obsessed with games ... driven by computational history (you didn't think that had died, did you?) and a large dose of escapism from my daily grind.

Currently I am fascinated by Nomic: A Game of Self-Amendment.

Nomic is a game in which changing the rules is a move. In that respect it differs from almost every other game. The primary activity of Nomic is proposing changes in the rules, debating the wisdom of changing them in that way, voting on the changes, deciding what can and cannot be done afterwards, and doing it. Even this core of the game, of course, can be changed.

The way the rules are put forward, you can play with points and win that way or attempt to win by Paradox:

213. If the rules are changed so that further play is impossible, or if the legality of a move cannot be determined with finality, or if by the Judge's best reasoning, not overruled, a move appears equally legal and illegal, then the first player unable to complete a turn is the winner.
This rule takes precedence over every other rule determining the winner.

Does anyone want to sent up a game with me? We only need 3 players ... and we can probably do it with a blog.

Thursday Game

Now that I am (almost) over my Grow addiction, I need something else to while away the work hours between builds of software that slowly drive me mental.

So this week I have been mostly playing: Valo.

Very simple, very mesmerising, very frenetic.

On games

Here's an interesting interview with the creator of Super Columbine Masacre.

I played the game ... it definitely doesn't pull any punches. You wander around hacking and slashing kids in the school. The game itself is built with a tool called RPG Maker which basically lets you make RPG game in the style of Zelda. That's how the game looks and plays, it's all fairly primitive. The content is everything in this game. I remain in two minds about it, really.

While we're there, this game is pretty confronting: Darfur is Dying