Nerd heaven. In chase mode, Pinky behaves as he does because he does not target Pac-Man’s tile directly. Instead, he selects an offset four tiles away from Pac-Man in the direction Pac-Man is currently moving (with one exception). The pictures below illustrate the four possible offsets Pinky will use to determine his target tile based…
I recently gave a brief presentation on games to our school’s education faculty. One faculty member (I believe he used to be a school principal) got fairly excited, asking me whether he could use Crazy Machines to set up a scientific experiment to show his students. I suggested that he was thinking of the game…
You are pleased to find scientific evidence of a phenomenon that you had been familiar with all along through your love of interactive fiction. You check BoingBoing, where you find exactly the same lame second-person intro gimmick. When the volunteers read statements that began, “You are…” they pictured the scene through their own eyes. However,…
Great little feature on a nostalgic pleasure. The Ferris wheel takes you nowhere but up and around. And it is precisely the lack of direction that makes you feel as if you are going everywhere. It doesn’t feed us, doesn’t clothe us, doesn’t give us a home. But man, we’re told, does not live on…
This is fairly recent news, and at the moment I only see press releases and mission statements, and bloggers. So I’m still not sure what to make of this, but it’s definitely something to watch: an elementary school with a curriculum built from the ground up on the procedural principles of gaming. Out of school…
I’ve had a recurring dream since I was a teenager, somehow riding along behind my old car — it’s always the car I’ve most recently traded in or otherwise lost — with a remote control in my hand. I’m controlling my car, which keeps rushing ahead of me, eventually disappearing around the corner where I…
What does my ten-year-old son think he has learned from playing Civilization 3? Similar:Stage Right's production of 'Secret Garden' is heart-tugging showIn the Stage Right production, the role …Current_EventsLearning the hard way, by making mistakes and starting over. The fore section of the fanta… AestheticsFirst Evidence That Social Bots Play a Major Role in Spreading…
Disturbing, yet cool. Biotele.com A beam of white light is made up of all the colours in the spectrum. The range extends from red through to violet, with orange, yellow, green and blue in between. But there is one colour that is notable by its absence. Pink (or magenta, to use its official name)…
Update: The AP posted the correction within 18 minutes. Not bad. However… Similar:Mr. President, stop attacking the pressReagan recognized that as leader of the …CultureMy "Writing About Literature" Students Are Sampling Text Adventure GamesI’m having my students play Adam Cadre’s…CultureA Book Itself Is a Little Machine: Emily Short's Interactive FictionWords do some things much better…
Just as I spent the afternoon of 9/11/2001 making a web page, because it helped occupy my mind, I’m spending a few minutes while my daughter is otherwise occupied, observing the phrasing of the WTAE-TV news article: A Seton Hill University student is dead following a police investigation off campus in Greensburg early Sunday morning. …
Interactive Fiction Writing Month (Feb 15 – March 15) This is the blag for Interactive Fiction Month 2009, an attempt to lure beginners into learning Inform through a series of easy tasks with concrete deadlines, and to promote discourse on game design in general. Similar:Students Speak Up: Trust Us With DevicesThe students who are, in…
I bugged out of work a few hours early today so I could meet up with the family for a matinee showing of Coraline. The local theater had a rather defensive home-grown sign explaining that the extra $2.50 they were charging per ticket pays for the cost of renting the 3D projection equipment from Disney.…
I didn’t buy a personal Kindle — the price was too steep. But I did ask our library to buy one, and I have been experimenting with reading PDFs on my new tablet PC. So I was interested when I first heard the hype surrounding what may be Amazon’s announcement of the next version of…
If you have a Facebook account, you’re probably familiar with the “25 Things About Me” meme. Mike McPhaden unearthed “Wm. Shakespeare’s Five and Twenty Random Things Abovt Me,” of which the best (IMHO) is the following: 14 On the topic of dating, my daughter Susanna loues to remind me: ~Jvliet was only thirteen! And I…
Keats can keep his urn with its leaf-fring’d legend. I’ve got a much better slice-of-life to share. When I called my parents tonight, my father reminded me of an exchange he had with my daughter when she was about four. My Daughter (to her grandfather): This is my teddy bear. My Father (to his granddaughter):…
News about a free-speech dust-up in the department where I used to work at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire: This fall, the English department, the publication’s then “administrative home,” voted unanimously to sever its ties to Flip Side, citing, in a statement, interest in “fostering the responsible use of free speech and the mutually respectful community…
My brother-in-law, who lives in New Jersey, is a Steelers fan. He asked for a keepsake issue of the local paper, so I sent out an e-mail to my colleagues to beg for their used copies. The truth is, I wouldn’t even take a free subscription to the print edition, since it would mean more junk piling…
What appears to be a smiley winks out from an 1862 transcript of a speech by ==|;o)> NY Times City Room Similar:Overwhelmed? Start a new to-do list with "1) Breathe; 2) Make 'to-do' list" Felt momentarily overwhelmed by the da…CultureStudents must learn how to get things wrong. Only one subject does that. [English.]I invest a…
A nifty little primer, compiled by Nate Piekos. CROSSBAR I This is probably the biggest mistake seen amongst amateur letterers. An “I” with the crossbars on top and bottom is virtually only used for the personal pronoun, “I.” The only other allowable use of the “crossbar I” is in abbreviations. Any other instance of the letter should just…
Great piece from Ben Kuchera at Ars Technica. Today I decided to conduct an experiment. I started calling people I knew, and I asked if they had one or more video games in the house. Then I asked if they breast-fed their children. To my great shock, most answered “yes” to both. One couple I contacted switched to formula after…