Sunday  the Sixteenth of February, 2003

I mentioned kennings a while ago, the Norse metaphor system that derives from "a is to b as c is to d" analogy pairings; after playing the chain-game in a secret online forum for a couple of months, I've gotten around to writing an automated, dedicated Kenning Game Engine.  ]

Passing Frenzies: Thief II - Button Men - Startopia - BlogNomic - Trodo


 Saturday  the Fifteenth

As of today: "The 16th rule of BlogNomic is you don't talk about BlogNomic."  ]


 Friday  the Fourteenth

Thief 2 is still the best first-person-anything game I've played; I'm still slogging through it periodically, a burglary here, a moonlit rooftop escape there. I'm probably a bit out of touch as FPS games go, but the sheer epic scale of the levels is consistently awesome - all the more so for seeming (at least on the smaller scale) designed first for aesthetics and structural common sense, and then tweaked for playability. You're given a pretty free reign as to how you go about breaking into the city bank, yet whichever route you take feels detailed and developed enough for it to have been the designers' intention all along.

They've cut right back on the silly zombies and monsters, as well, making it far more of an edgy and realistic game than the first. Even having an evil genius with the voice of Droopy the dog is twisted to chillingly sinister effect, in the end. Thief 2 is going for five quid on a budget label these days; if you've got something to run it on, buy it.  ]



 Thursday  the Thirteenth

La même plaisanterie en Français (pour un prix de BlogNomic), sans calembour: "Il y a deux poissons d'or dans un réservoir de verre. Une poisson tourne vers l'autre poisson et il dit 'Pouvez-vous conduire cette chose?'"  ]
Idle fade-to-credits persiflage on a television: someone tells the joke about two goldfish in a bowl (one saying to the other "Can you drive this thing?"), and someone else points out that it doesn't make any sense if they're in a bowl; that they have to be in a tank for the pun to work.

I'd always thought that two goldfish perceiving their cramped artificial environment as a vehicle that they hadn't been trained to drive (both of them lacking sufficient short term memory to think it through) was the joke.  ]


"The number of worlds of outcomes grows too quickly. To anything I say, you can reply with a million things. A universe of conversations after a minute. So prune. Discard the conversations where you admit an affair. I don't want to end like that. Keep the ones where you say you still love me. Do I have any left? If I don't ask you if you love me still, then you won't say no."
The Role of Cooperation in Human Interaction - deeply embedding Upsideclown memebulletry, from the sharpest shooter of them all. This is exactly what short fiction is for.  ]


 Wednesday  the Twelfth

"For a fee of $5.00 per word (5 word minimum), our customers can have telegrams delivered to people who have passed away. This is done with the help of terminally Ill volunteers who memorize the telegrams before passing away, and then deliver the telegrams after they have passed away."
Your money back if they're not dead within a year. Afterlife Telegrams seem to be targetting a very thin slice of the world's gullible. [via Sore Eyes]  ]
I wrote this because, surprisingly, nobody else seems to have written it yet:-

 #   |.
###e#+.
     |.

If I were a NetHack monster, I would be a floating eye. I see and sense absolutely everything that happens around me. I just don't do very much about it.

Which NetHack Monster Are You?
 ]


 Tuesday  the Eleventh

(.hguoht ,tnetnoc golb egaruocne ot yaw enasni fi doog a s'tI .tey ,gnihton ,rE ?naem stniop od tahw dnA .stniop mialc nac yllufsseccus meht etelpmoc ohw sreyalp ;yadnoM yreve ,daeha keew eht rof sksat detaler-golb eralced ot sreyalp eht wolla selur emag tnerruc eht - eno rehtona si siht dna ,yrtne tseug eht ,gniht cimoNgolB a saw tahT)  ]
America is threatened due to specific information, including absolute lack of times, locations, or methods. Handily, Chris Morris has released an mp3 of the original Bush recording upon which the document was (not really) based. RavenBlack was there. He knows.  ]


 Monday  the Tenth

"Chess is a good example of an extremely wide decision set. Your decision set is composed of all of your pieces multiplied by all of the spaces that they can end up on. At game start, when things are fairly simple, that means that your decision space is twenty wide. You can move each of the eight pawns one or two spaces and you can also move each of the two knights to two different spaces. As the game progresses, this decision set just gets wider and wider (for a while at least)."
A good article on decision trees in gaming; presenting players with enough of a tree to make an interesting and rewarding game, but not so much as to overwhelm them. Some solid guidance on pruning the tree through move costs and turn-phasing and things. I can't remember if I've heard the rule of seven (plus or minus two) applied to a game-tree context before, or not, but it's a valuable thought. [via Zarba]  ]

As 
Above

Brain children. Recent or noteworthy Web offspring.

Online cliques. Trespassers may be welcome.

In the bookpile. Powered by allconsuming.net.

Incidental music. Ohrwurmen or otherwise.

Other weblogs. The ones I make a point of returning to a lot.

Supporting cast. That have Web pages. In alphabetical order.

Weeks beginning. All having ended.
2003: 10.02 03.02 27.01 20.01 13.01 06.01

2002: 30.12 23.12 16.12 09.12 02.12 25.11 18.11 11.11 04.11 28.10 21.10 14.10 07.10 30.09 23.09 16.09 09.09 02.09 26.08 19.08 12.08 05.08 29.07 22.07 15.07 08.07 01.07 24.06 17.06 10.06 03.06 27.05 20.05 13.05 06.05 29.04 22.04 15.04 08.04 01.04 25.03 18.03 11.03 04.03 25.02 18.02 11.02 04.02 28.01 21.01 14.01 07.01

2001: 31.12 24.12 17.12 10.12 03.12 26.11 19.11 12.11 05.11 29.10 22.10 15.10 08.10 01.10 24.09 17.09 10.09 03.09 27.08 20.08 13.08 06.08 30.07 23.07 16.07 09.07 02.07 25.06 18.06 11.06 04.06 28.05 21.05 14.05 07.05 30.04 23.04 16.04 09.04 02.04 26.03 19.03 12.03 05.03 26.02 19.02 12.02 05.02 29.01 22.01 15.01 08.01 01.01

2000: 25.12 18.12 11.12 04.12 27.11 20.11


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