Infocom is long gone, but never mind. The original Infocom games are available for download at www.latz.org, and also for free play through AIM. A Web programmer named Andrew Baio has written an “AIM bot” that makes it possible. Bots are simple programs that act like a human being who’s subscribed to an instant messaging…
The hand is the great symbol of man the tool-maker as well as man the writer. But in our super-mechanized era, many young people have lost a sense of the tangible and of the power of the hand. A flick of the finger changes TV channels, surfs the web, or alters and deletes text files.…
“You feel like you’re the guy wearing the red shirt on Star Trek,” says Kirwin, referring to characters who often died on the TV show. He helped train his replacements in 2002. “It’s a very unpleasant situation. It’s unfair. These people appeared, and they’d sit and shadow us and watch what we do.” —Stephanie Armour…
Unfortunately the economics of journalism push it into entertainment. Opinions (called columns) are cheaper than news as on columnist can crank out an opinion (based on the news of others) every day without leaving the office. Editorials ditto. Big colour pictures are cheap. Add a few token journalists that crawl around writing “in depth” stories…
Now the U.S. ambassador to Hungary, Brinker is the E.F. Hutton of the breast-cancer world. When she speaks, anyone who’sanyone listens. Brinker relies on the blockbuster PR value of the 5K Race for the Cure. The year-round calendar of cancer walks that draw grief-stricken yet hopeful patients and their loved ones, along with a fawning…
Here at work, one of my co-workers captured a screenshot of the blue screen of death and made that his screensaver. I’m wondering if it is to make people feel bad for him, because if he is behind on a project and his screensaver comes on, then you think ‘poor guy is going to lose…
Lawley is not alone in looking to blogs as a potential escape from the “course as online powerpoint slide” stranglehold of today’s commercial course management systems. Charles Lowe of Cyberdash.com recently published an account of his own experience using open source weblogs (PostNuke) to support his online writing class; in a companion piece he compares…
Say, how do you feel about ice cream? Fan of the ice cream? Maybe it’ll help soften the punch of Quality Inn’s video game assortment. You’ve got three different kinds of ice cream bars to choose from, and they’ll only cost you a buck and a half each. Finally, Atlantic City has a stereotypical bargain…
Looking back I am amazed that Mary and I have made it this far, both of us laboring as freelance writers, and nothing but. There is the constant danger of work running out, and from time to time it has. Once due to the harassment of the aforementioned child support authorities. However, we’ve always found…
The study raised new questions about the teaching of history after it found that 11 per cent of the British population believed Hitler did not exist and 9 per cent said Winston Churchill was fictional. A further 33 per cent believed Mussolini was not a real historical figure…. Some 27 per cent of people interviewed…
What I Need The power cord for my rechargeable razor didn’t make it back from my last trip. The shaver has lost the last of its charge, and I will be quite stubbly for the forseeable future. Wal-Mart and Sears are no help… It’s time to make a trip to the dollar store. Similar:Facebook Axes…
Blanche tells Mitch about her husband. They were only teenagers when they married. The boy was beautiful, sensitive, and talented. She eloped with him, not realizing that the boy needed her help. She “discovered” his secret in the worst possible way: she found him in bed with someone else. Afterward, everyone pretended that nothing had…
All of these tracks were then installed into a device known as, appropriately enough, a laugh machine. | This 28-inch-high apparatus resembles an organ, having 10 horizontal and four vertical keys and a foot pedal. The engineer “orchestrates” the laugh track by using the keyboard to select the type, sex, and age of the laugh,…
Stan Wagon, a mathematician at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., has a bicycle with square wheels. It’s a weird contraption, but he can ride it perfectly smoothly. His secret is the shape of the road over which the wheels roll. Stan Wagon rides his square-wheeled trike over a special roadway. Courtesy of Stan —Riding…
I am sanitaryware enthusiast (I have no idea why) and have been restoring and supplying antique bathroom fittings for the past fourteen years. I also collect trade catalogues, salesmen‘ssamples and even full size W.C.‘sand washbasins. —Simon Kirby —Flushed With Pride – The Story of Thomas Crapper (JLDR) Oh, those eccentric Brits. Much more colorful, and far…
‘Click Cancel to Proceed’: Pop-Up Dialog Rhetoric A little while ago, I got an e-mail from a Ph.D. student working on a research project. Would I mind filling out an online form that asked questions about leadership and religion? The form says I can leave certain questions blank. So I do. After I’ve filled out…
To cut to the chase: The game industry currently doesn’t believe in “game research”. You’re either working on a shippable product, or you’re bullshitting around. Shippability implies minimizing risk; minimizing risk implies minimizing innovation. There are regions of design space that cannot be reached incrementally. That is, there exist new game genres that can’t be…
Do you know the origin of term BSOD aka ?Blue Screen of Death?? Well, the term ?Blue Screen of Death? was not the original acronym for BSOD. The original term meant the ?Black Screen of Death? and was seen when running under Windows 3.0. A user would attempt to run a DOS application and instead…
The only way to get the industry to take risks on games that explore the missing themes of human experience — heartbreak, betrayal, anticipation, jealousy, despair, eternal hope, grief, and so many others — is to nurture students who are inspired and who are capable of inspiring others with their vision…. If academics can help…
The faithful, in order to be more true to the ‘Jedi Code of Honour’, crouch before each other and duck their ‘heads’ down as a mark of respect before enjoining battle. Some people think that’s silly. I thought it was silly, the first time I saw it. Then I saw everybody was doing it. And…