Gmail Custom Time

If you're in the cool kids' club, you might see an invite to the new Gmail Custom Time beta.

This is way cooler than paper, and — Dare I say it? — cooler than the moon.

Dargin tribute video

The Australian has a good photomontage with audio of Alan Dargin's memorial service in Sydney.

Four minutes.

Steve Martin is a very funny fellow

Steve Martin has a piece in the Smithsonian mag about his comedy. I can't quite call it a funny article, but I know that at least two of you (Josh and Marc) will appreciate it.

If you don't feel like reading a bio piece interspersed comedy insight, I'll just quote one of his bits for you.

I had the plumber joke, which was impossible to understand even for plumbers: "OK, I don't like to gear my material to the audience, but I'd like to make an exception, because I was told that there is a convention of plumbers in town this week—I understand about 30 of them came down to the show tonight—so before I came out, I worked up a joke especially for the plumbers. Those of you who aren't plumbers probably won't get this and won't think it's funny, but I think those of you who are plumbers will really enjoy this. This lawn supervisor was out on a sprinkler maintenance job, and he started working on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom seven-inch gangly wrench. Just then this little apprentice leaned over and said, 'You can't work on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom seven-inch wrench.' Well, this infuriated the supervisor, so he went and got Volume 14 of the Kinsley manual, and he reads to him and says, 'The Langstrom seven-inch wrench can be used with the Findlay sprocket.' Just then the little apprentice leaned over and says, 'It says sprocket, not socket!' [Worried pause.] "Were these plumbers supposed to be here this show?"

Quickies and Quotes.

Today's A.Word.A.Day (cat's paw) had this quote, which seems very fitting for post-birthday contemplation:

It is not how old you are, but how you are old. —Jules Renard, writer
(1864-1910)

Bruce Schneier argues that you should leave your wireless unencrypted:

To me, it's basic politeness. Providing internet access to guests is kind of like providing heat and electricity, or a hot cup of tea. But to some observers, it's both wrong and dangerous.

Yehuda laments random combat in board games, and ponders how to fix it. Interestingly, he provided a few solutions to rejuvenate games a little over a year ago:

Alternately, you may be able to buy enhancing strength points. When conflict occurs, each player decides how many points to add to the conflict, and the higher value wins. You can have the attacking player decide first, and then the defending player, or you can have both sides choose secretly. You can also opt to allow uninvolved players to toss strength onto either side of the battle.

(NB, this conflict system is akin to Shazamm [BGG, BUY ME!] [itself similar to an older game called Footprints or Quo Vadis {BGG, OOP}], but I think that his game as mentioned might do better with a card system borrowed from Dungeon Twister [BGG, BUY ME!].)

News of the morbid

Maybe we've been watching too much CSI lately, but this story about finding an infant skeleton in a suitcase seems like a television plot-of-the-week.


UPDATE: Updated findings from a pathologist.

Webcomics I read

Here's a quick and dirty post that I've meant http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifto do for a while.

I read comics. I like 'em. Pre-K, the music jukebox had a program called dailystrips that screen-scraped web pages for comics images. (This is back in the dark days before RSS was as popular as it is now.)

Right now, here's what I've got in my RSS reader, to the best of my recollection. (Mom, some of these use naughty words. You might not want to click.) I need to add this to my sidebar.

• Ctrl-Alt-Del
• Diesel Sweeties
• For Better or For Worse
• Lucid TV
• Octopus Pie
• Order of the Stick
• Penny Arcade
• Perry Bible Fellowship
• Questionable Content
• Shortpacked
• Wondermark
• XKCD

Can anyone suggest some comics I should be reading?

Of foul language and naked oxen

First, I assume that you can read English. Secondly, I assume that you know how to swear in at least one language, regardless of your cursing habits. Thirdly, I think you should read Steven Pinker's article subtitled "Why We Curse." Astonishingly, the title has a number of asterisks, but the editors did not censor any word in the article itself.

I've had a huge problem with Yak-Shaving these days. I want to go to the bank before it closes, but first I want to write this article, and to do that I need to research and re-read the articles I want to link to, and I need to find which tab I've saved those links, which reminds me that I forgot to read my webcomics for today, and one includes a link to a book I want to check out, which reminds me that I need to go to the bank so I can get money if I want to buy a book. For example.

Update, briefly

My Macbook in in the shop for a failed optical drive and a cracked case. Here's hoping it comes back soon.

I also have two job leads, so keep your fingers crossed on that front.

You know how much I love wordplay and dialects, so rate yourself: Yankee or Dixie? I'm 83% Dixie, which is a little stunning. What about you?

Also, someone on BGG posted a deathmatch-style Wiz-War variant. Fun!

What's next, zombies?

Seriously, I think this opened up one of the Living Dead movies.

I swear I am not making this up, but USA Today is reporting"Peru blames meteorite for strange illness." The Beeb and the AP also have the story.

Imagine an Evil Google

I normally don't talk about what I'm reading my RSS, I just share them and move along. I assume that some people read what catches their eye, but there must be some folks who don't know that I'm doing this. I read a lot, especially lately, and I don't write nearly enough.

Maybe I should write more about what I've read lately, perhaps do a little more op-ed pieces.

My man Ken, who I missed at Dragon*Con, points us to a short fiction piece by Cory Doctorow called Scroogled. Read it, read it.

What has massive, effortless, ubiquitous search done for you lately? What do you fear it could do? What might you hope it would do?

Geek of the Week

Hey, neat. They made me Geek of the Week over on BGG. Seek it out if you want to peek on me speaking from my beak about be(eek)ing Geek of the Week!

There are entirely too many close front unrounded vowels in that first paragraph. Wheee!

Improv game design and procrastination hacks

Here's a twofer quickie.

I posted the latest improv game design experiment over on the Flywheel. I know that it doesn't get updated super frequently, so here's your excuse to go check it out for some freshness.

I came across this list of procrastination hacks by some fellow who posted the list as a means to hack procrastination. Since I'm about to have my machine off for a few hours while I calibrate my battery, I'm going to hit #8, #12, and at least #3 on a few things I want to do.

James Ernest on design

I generally don't like to just quote-and-link, but I can't help it sometimes.

Cheapass' James Ernest has an article in Make magazine on game design. Some of it is pretty basic and introductory stuff, but this quote stands out as particularly insightful.

I like to say that there are two kinds of novice game designers: those who make houses out of doors, and those who make roads out of walls. The "house made of doors" game has no clear goal but offers many ways to get there. The "road made of walls" has a clear objective, the end of the road, with obstacles along the way. But a good game combines these two - a road made of doors, with a clear goal and multiple ways to achieve it.

Definitely a different way of thinking about design.

Shared and sharing, Web 2.0 style

Google, in their infinite wisdom, makes it easy to compile a list of "Hey, that's interesting" articles into a single page for public consumption. This kicks the pants out of me writing single posts that say "Heck, check this out- I think it's neat" and then a link to the whatever it is. I honestly don't think it's laziness, but rather a courtesy to my readers. I don't want to turn the Non-Waterlogged Blog into a rotating link du jour series of posts. I still have a lot to say, and this blog should remain my primary platform and soapbox to open my brain to the world.

Instead, I throw all this stuff into the sidebar. (Look on the right for a box called "What's on my RSS" and you can see what I'm reading these days.)

In the last few months, I discovered there's a super easy way to hoover all these shared links into a handy Javascript widget to slide into my Blogger template. Ah, Javascript, how I love thee. Once I took the five minutes to decide on a color scheme and set it up, now it takes a single click at the bottom of an article in Google Reader and posts automagically appear here on my blog.

Naturally, I'd rather that you come over to my blog and read stuff here- I'm trying to get my ad revenue above ten bucks this year. Everyone likes RSS, though, so feel free to check out the public page directly and RSS that.

Casual electronic gameplay

I spent a good deal of this last Sunday playing videogames, which is a little unusual for me.

I've found a new-to-me site for those wonderfully addicting Flash games that are so popular these days. On the plus side, the eponymous Jay of "Jay is Games" does a good job of reviewing/overviewing each game, adding tags and such so you know what is Flash and what is downloadable: Windows (usually) Mac (sometimes)... Sorry, Tux, you're vastly underrepresented. On the minus side, prepare to lose track of time.

Here are a few picks; N.B., I take no responsibility for your lost productivity.

• Airport Security, a quick clicky political statement
• Castle Smasher, phun with physics and destruction
• Cyberpunk, a hackerly puzzle adventure with tons of atmosphere
  
• Egg Way, a bizarre Japanese game about frying an eggFeed me, a fun little Venus-flytrap platformer
• Flow, a gorgeous and beautiful microcellular eating game
• The Game of Disorientation, a very trippy and queasy avoidance game
• Gateway, a brief and fun robot puzzle
• Knytt, a Windows-only downloadable platformer
• Line Rider, a physics/racing toy
• The Missile Game, a racing avoidance game, very fluid
• Panic, shooty shooty
• Prototyprally, a very light hovercraft game with interesting steering
• Red, simple shooty game with nerf ammo
• Ringmania, sort of like a bubble-shooting game
• RSVP, a delightfully old-school card game on the web
• Tomb of the Mummy, a semi-frustrating puzzle
• Virtual Villagers, a light island sim, only downloadable for Mac or Windows

There's literally dozens, if not hundreds, more games to choose from. I have at least three or four tabs open with what to play next.

You'll notice a theme here: Casual. This is sort-of-a buzzword for the kind of gaming that things like the Wii or mobile phone games try to achieve: Imagine the person with only drips and drabs of free time: the commuter on the subway with ten or fifteen minutes to kill, or the office worker with a thirty-minute lunch break, the new parent with a napping infant. These people like entertainment, but might not have hours and hours to devote to play. (Somewhere Greg Costikyan has a great essay on the growth of casual gaming, but I can't find it at this point in time.)

At any rate, casual gaming is great stuff. Electronic games don't need to cost $50 plus a subscription fee, run only on the latest hardware, or require you to devote tons of time to squeeze out the fun.

What are you casually playing?

A brief video interlude

Meh. I'm sick and feverish. Watch these videos.

Here's an octopus escaping through a one-inch hole, courtesy Hilary.

More mollusk goodness: An octopus eating a shark.

A live-action stop-motion battle: Tony versus Paul.

My favorite, an Honda Accord commerical: Cog. (More at Wikipedia.)

If you've ever played a console "RPG," watch the forty-minute College Saga (parts 2 3 4), a Final Fantasy parody.

DM of the Rings

If you've ever played an RPG ever or are remotely aware of the Lord of the Rings in any medium whatsoever, you should go read these comics.

Link-o-link

Today's Escapist has an interview with Steve Jackson. He talks about their new MMORPG (!), UltraCorps, his history as a designer, and sheds some insight on the game industry. Regardless of what you think of the guy, his company is in the top five RPG imprints, and his enthusiasm for the hobby shows.

Kenzoid points out that the Royal Society now has some of their old old journals available online for free until the end of the year. This is primo history, from primary sources. Some of this dates back to the 17th century, and it's particularly notable to read Ben Franklin, publisher, discuss electricity in his own words- as a PDF.