Submitted by Morbus Iff on Fri, 2010-06-18 19:45
Notable links enjoyed today:
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"Many readers have heard of Frank Stockton’s famous story, The Lady or the Tiger. But very few have heard of the sequel which [is reprinted] in full here, The Discourager of Hesitancy (A continuation of “The Lady, or the Tiger?”)."
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"To say it’s about Everything — which its adherents swear it is — is a bit grandiose. So let’s just say it’s about destiny. And metaphysics. And quantum physics. And leadership, torture, time travel, synchronicity, Skinner boxes, geodesic domes, polar bears, doomsday equations, comic books, the Casimir effect, and the no-less-potent Cass Elliot effect. It was weird. Even weirder: It was a hit … [W]e’re stopping time here and making that fidgety, spatiotemporally promiscuous island sit still long enough for us to plumb and pay tribute to its mysteries. Once more into the hatch!"
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"For collectible card games (CCGs), game designers often limit the availability of cards that have a particularly powerful gameplay effect. The conventional wisdom is that the more powerful a card is, the more rare it should be. The long-term implications of such an approach can have negative consequences on a game’s suitability for casual play. Digital Addiction (a company that produced online, collectible card games in the 1990s) developed a different game design philosophy for balancing collectible card games. The approach called for the most obviously and generally useful cards to be the most common and to equate rarity to specialization rather than raw power."
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"In the Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea I first encountered the rudiments of the 23 enigma. As the history of the origin of the 23 enigma has it, Robert Anton Wilson first heard of this puzzling bit of Forteana from William Burroughs … The 23 enigma did not, however start with Burroughs' Captain Clark in the 1960's. Neither did it start with what is probably the earliest example from Burroughs' collection of cases involving the 23 enigma and notorious gangster Dutch Schultz during the 1930's. Inspired by Burroughs, Wilson began to collect data on the 23 enigma after 1965, and it is said that he believed that Burroughs' was the first person to notice the 23 enigma. But that notion of the 23 enigma can be found decades earlier as the following three examples demonstrate."
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"The Ultimate Alphabet is a best-selling book by Mike Wilks. It is a collection of 26 paintings, each depicting a collection of objects starting with a particular letter of the alphabet … According to Wilks the book contained depictions of 7,777 words in total ranging from just 30 for the letter X to 1,229 for the letter S, taking a total of 18,000 hours to complete … As he had predicted, between the two editions Wilks had discovered a number of words he had omitted from his original list, bringing the total up to 7,825 (and that of the most prolific letter, S, to 1,234); and this did not include several more words discovered by readers that were too late to include in the lists."
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"People often see hidden faces in things. Depending on the circumstances, this is referred to as pareidolia, the perception or recognition of a specific pattern or form in something essentially different. It is thus also a kind of optical illusion. When an artist notices that two different things have a similar appearance, and draws or paints a picture making this similarity evident he makes images with double meanings. Many of these images are hidden faces or hidden skulls."
Submitted by Morbus Iff on Wed, 2010-06-16 19:45
Notable links enjoyed today:
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"So here's the big question: Are some games intentionally designed to keep you compulsively playing, even when you're not enjoying it? #5: Putting You in a Skinner Box; #4: Creating Virtual Food Pellets For You To Eat; #3: Making You Press the Lever; #2: Keeping You Pressing It… Forever; #1: Getting You To Call the Skinner Box Home."
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"Speculation about how performance artist Marina Abramovic pees has been growing steadily over the weekend. Permanently seated on the second floor of the MoMA, her performance “The Artist is Present” invites one sitter at a time to stare at her. She never leaves her chair."
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"When a white horse is not a horse, also known as the White Horse Dialogue, is a famous paradox in Chinese philosophy. Gongsun Long wrote this circa 300 BCE dialectic analysis of the question Can it be that a white horse is not a horse? … This dialogue continues with deliberations over colored and colorless horses and whether "white" and "horse" can be separated from "white horse”."
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“For fans and scholars of the silent-film era, the search for a copy of the original version of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” has become a sort of holy grail. One of the most celebrated movies in cinema history, “Metropolis” had not been viewed at its full length — roughly two and a half hours — since shortly after its premiere in Berlin in 1927, when it was withdrawn from circulation and about an hour of its footage was amputated and presumed destroyed. But on Friday Film Forum in Manhattan will begin showing what is being billed as “The Complete Metropolis,” with a DVD scheduled to follow later this year, after screenings in theaters around the country."
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"As someone who adamantly prefers to call themselves a "game critic" rather than a "game reviewer," I've been asked by several parties to make some counter-comment to film critic Roger Ebert's recent post. Presumably they were all hoping for some expletive-laden takedown of all Ebert's arguments broken up by comparisons between the man and various historical dictators and farm animals. But the thing is, I like Ebert. I think he's an intelligent guy and well worth listening to, especially when he's got a particularly terrible film in his sights. In my more egotistical moments, I might one day aspire to being his videogaming equivalent."
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"I met Andrea Phillips at this year’s SXSW, where she delivered a smart, wide-ranging talk about the representation of women in ARGs. Andrea is a veteran ARG writer, designer, and player, and is the current chair of the IGDA ARG Special Interest Group. In this interview, Andrea discusses her creative process and the formal and technical limitations (and possibilities) of ARGs and other playful forms of transmedia storytelling."
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"To make your transmedia experience accessible, you need to connect with the audience on their terms, where they already are, with tools that they’re already using, and in ways that they already understand … Now don’t think that this is some rigid thing. It’s completely flexible and can be (should be!) customized to your specific transmedia experience. It may seem that the easiest solution is to throw the experience out onto a popular social networking site or two. You could be right, that might be the best strategy. But don’t lock yourself into that thinking. There are a lot of other options out there and they really depend on your audience."
Submitted by Morbus Iff on Tue, 2010-06-15 19:45
Notable links enjoyed today:
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"We hacked the Portal 2 BBS and tracked Meltzer's kidnapped daughter to Rapture without touching a video game console. Alternate-reality games (ARG) have become more sophisticated in the last few years, and now it seems every major release comes with an extra mystery to solve. What makes these games so popular? Who plays them, and why do developers sink so much time and effort into a free product?"
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"One man's Shakespeare is another man's trash fiction. Consider this pithy commentary on the Great Bard's work: "With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare….” But, of course, there must be SOME writers we can all agree on as truly great, right? Like Jane Austen. Or not: "Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice,' I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”"
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"There are people arguing that the ebook will never achieve mainstream adoption. I think we can safely assume, for reasons logistical, economic and environmental, that this isn't the case … Once our books are consumed in significant proportion by people reading on the screen, people are going to want to interact with their books the way they do other content. And that pressure is going to fundamentally change what books are, and how they're written, sold, and read … Welcome, one and all, to the rebirth of short and serialized fiction. Short fiction has been dead for a long time. And by "dead" I mean there's been very little market for it, which means there's been very little money for writing it. That's going to be changing.”
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"This is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000 word pulp story. It has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words. No yarn of mine written to the formula has yet failed to sell. The business of building stories seems not much different from the business of building anything else."
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"In the 1990s, a European biotech company prepared to commercially release a genetically engineered soil bacterium for use by farmers. They were operating under two very reasonable assumptions: 1. Nobody likes plant waste [and] 2. Everybody likes booze. Whereas the common man might address these issues by simply not doing any plowing and opting to get plowed instead, scientists at the biotech company thought of a much more elegant solution: Engineer a bacterium that aggressively decomposes dead plant material--specifically wheat--into alcohol. And in 1990, they did exactly that. The bacterium was called Klebsiella planticola, and it nearly murdered everybody; you just don't know it yet."
Submitted by Morbus Iff on Sat, 2010-06-05 19:45
Notable links enjoyed today:
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"The Dyatlov Pass incident refers to an event that resulted in the deaths of nine ski hikers in the northern Ural mountains on the night of February 2, 1959 ... The lack of eyewitnesses and subsequent investigations into the hikers' deaths have inspired much speculation. Investigators at the time determined that the hikers tore open their tent from within, departing barefoot in heavy snow. Though the corpses showed no signs of struggle, two victims had fractured skulls, two had broken ribs, and one was missing her tongue. According to sources, four of the victims' clothing contained high levels of radiation."
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"This service allows you convert a Flash Video / FLV file (YouTube's videos, etc.) to MPEG4 (AVI / MOV / MP4 / MP3 / 3GP) file online. It is using a compressed domain transcoder technology. It converts FLV to MPEG4 faster and less lossy than a typical transcoder." Wonder how well this works.
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"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it." The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the perverse situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence: because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding."
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"Besides, there’s something about an unfinished series that people like ... When you have a finished series, it’s like a whole book. It’s longer, but it’s the same emotional experience, it’s complete, over. An unfinished series on the other hand is much more likely to provoke conversation, because you’re wondering what will happen, and whether the clues you have spotted are clues or red herrings. People complained that The Gathering Storm wasn’t the one final volume to complete the Wheel of Time, but they’re clearly loving talking about it. And I’ve noticed a lot less conversation about Harry Potter recently, now that everyone knows as much as there is to know. The final volume of a series closes everything down. With luck, it closes it down in a satisfying way. But even the best end will convey a strong sense of everything being over. An ongoing series remains perpetually open."
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"The rules for iPad content are still ambiguous. None of us has had enough time with the device to confidently define them. I have, however, spent six years thinking about materials, form, physicality and content and — to the best of my humble abilities — producing printed books. So, for now, here's my take on the print side of things moving forward: Ask yourself, "Is your work disposable?" For me, in asking myself this, I only see one obvious ruleset: Formless Content goes digital. Definite Content gets divided between the iPad and printing."
Submitted by Morbus Iff on Fri, 2010-06-04 19:45
Notable links enjoyed today:
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"Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell, dives into a world of game development which will emerge from the popular "Facebook Games" era." Incredible video, and yeah, honestly, this is the sort of future I do want.
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"The world is full of secret and exclusive places that we either don’t know about, or simply couldn’t visit if we wanted to. This list takes a look at ten of the most significant places around the world that are closed to the general public or are virtually impossible for the general public to visit." Includes Mezhgorye, the Vatican Secret Archives, Club 33, Moscow Metro-2, the White Gentlemen's Club, Area 51, Room 39, the Ise Grand Shrine, Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center, and RAF Menwith Hill.
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"Ol' Rip (died January 19, 1929) was a horned lizard ... whose supposed 31-year hibernation as an entombed animal is believed by some and doubted by others ... In 1897, a horned lizard was placed in a cornerstone of the Eastland County Courthouse in Eastland, Texas along with other time capsule memorabilia. When the courthouse was torn down 31 years later, the cornerstone was opened on February 18, 1928, a live horned lizard was produced, allegedly from within the time capsule."
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"What is it about the bizarre and mysterious that piques our curiosity? It entertains our sense of wonder and excites our imagination, for sure. Luckily for us, history is marked with strange, logic-defying occurrences to amuse us. Here is a list comprised of 10 more unexplainable and interesting phenomenon and incidents that we crave so much." Includes Ice Woman, Iron Pillar of Delhi, Carroll A. Deering, The Hutchison Effect, Faces of Belmez, Disappearing Lake of Patagonia, Chile, Raining Blobs, Animals within Stone, and Donnie Decker.
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"Know Your Meme: Documenting Internet phenomena: viral videos, image macros, catchphrases, web celebs and more." The RSS is ancient on this one, so manual catchup. Still a decent reference. I've been wanting to make one of these for a long time (sadly, the "Ate My Balls" meme is poorly documented).
Submitted by Morbus Iff on Wed, 2010-06-02 19:45
Notable links enjoyed today:
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"P&A Magazine is a bi-monthly "puzzle hunt" magazine sold on-line, featuring a puzzle extravaganza (a series of interconnected puzzles leading to a single solution). Each issue contains logic, word, and trivia puzzles intended to challenge even the most hard-core solver."
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"Walker shuns the sort of bibliomania that covets first editions for their own sake—many of the volumes that decorate the library's walls are leather-bound Franklin Press reprints. What gets him excited are things that changed the way people think, like Robert Hooke's Micrographia. Published in 1665, it was the first book to contain illustrations made possible by the microscope. He's also drawn to objects that embody a revelatory (or just plain weird) train of thought. "I get offered things that collectors don't," he says. "Nobody else would want a book on dwarfs, with pages beautifully hand-painted in silver and gold, but for me that makes perfect sense."
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"PuzzlePicnic originated from the wish to create an online community for those who like logic puzzles. Besides providing the opportunity to solve some nice puzzles from our collection and relax, we also want to become a platform for people who like to design their own puzzles and get them published online."
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Incredibly detailed resource for math puzzles. No RSS.
Submitted by Morbus Iff on Sat, 2010-05-29 19:45
Notable links enjoyed today:
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"Fictionaut is a vibrant literary community that is opening exciting new possibilities for short fiction and poetry. Part self-selecting magazine, part community network, Fictionaut is a way for readers to discover new voices and for writers to share their work, gain recognition, and connect with their audience and each other."
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Various message board based book clubs: The Next Best Book Club, SciFi and Fantasy Book Club, The Rory Gilmore Book Club (o_O), etc. Non-topical clubs are heavily feminine (like most I've seen), there's doesn't appear to be a huge amount of leeway between nomination and the start of reading, and it's hit or miss on whether there's driven discussion or come as you will.
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Classic Works of Literature, Philosophy, Science, History and Exploration and Travel. All books available under a Creative Commons License. "These web-books are intended to be new editions — Web editions — rather than facsimiles of previous editions. The key objectives are accessibility and readability. The implication of this is that we have generally made no attempt to retain pagination or other textual references which may have been in the source edition."
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"MST3K fans love to quote Joel Hodgson: "The right people will get it." And they always do; there's no disputing that. But occasionally, the wrong people want in on the joke. Not to say that you're the wrong person, of course — just that you're not the right person yet ... If you've ever seen the show, there's bound to have been some joke that you laughed at but left your friends or family scratching their heads. No one gets all the riffs (at least, no one that needs this site). So why not pool our collective knowledge of obscure and not-so-obscure knowledge, organize, categorize, and give everyone the benefit of our surplus of free time?"
Submitted by Morbus Iff on Tue, 2010-05-25 19:45
Notable links enjoyed today:
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"Click, tweet, e-mail, twitter, skim, browse, scan, blog, text: the jargon of the digital age describes how we now read, reflecting the way that the very act of reading, and the nature of literacy itself, is changing. The information we consume online comes ever faster, punchier and more fleetingly. Our attention rests only briefly on the internet page before moving incontinently on to the next electronic canapé ... The internet has evolved a new species of magpie reader, gathering bright little buttons of knowledge, before hopping on to the next shiny thing."
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"History relates that it was on November 10, 1871, that Henry Morton Stanley walked up to Dr Livingstone in the market place of Ujiji, and uttered the immortal line, "Dr Livingstone, I presume". But was that what he actually said? Nowadays there seems to be some doubt. ... Since Stanley apparently tore up the pages of his diary for the momentous day, there's no way of knowing the truth. The greeting seems to have shrunk in the telling, as it rapidly became a famous catchphrase. Stanley himself was using the snappier version by the time he got back to London, as this speech to a rapturous audience at St James's Hall records."
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"Just because you don’t enjoy reading a good book, doesn’t mean there aren’t many other uses for all of those books piled up in the attic." Some incredible imagery here, both from single books, and collections of books.
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"I finally settled on building the device I describe here: a puzzle box that won’t open until it is taken to a certain location ... Mounted into the lid, perhaps incongruously, are an illuminated button, a small display, and a mysterious module that sharp-eyed readers might recognize as a GPS."
Submitted by Morbus Iff on Wed, 2010-05-12 13:27
Every so often I'll ask Druplicon to remind me about something in the future, and then curse that I haven't yet written such functionality. Then everyone points and laughs at little ol' Morbus. Welp, NO MORE LAUGHING as that code has hit the CVS and Druplicon just now. From the integrated help: Reminders can be set with "BOTNAME: remind NICK (at|by|in|on) DURATION (about|how|that|to) MESSAGE". For example: "BOTNAME: remind Morbus in 1 hour and 6 minutes that his bot is awesome", "BOTNAME: remind me in 23 minutes to check my pot roast.", or even "BOTNAME: remind Monty on Wed, 12 May 2010 13:10:21 -0400 that this was when this code debuted."
Some examples:
<Morbus> Druplicon: remind me in 5 minutes to celebrate.
<Druplicon> Morbus: I'll remind you about that on Wed, 12 May 2010 13:32:55 -0400.
(time passes)
<Druplicon> Morbus: You asked me to remind you to celebrate.
<EvanDonovan> Druplicon: remind me in 7 hours that I should still be working :(
<Druplicon> EvanDonovan: I'll remind you about that on Wed, 12 May 2010 20:17:34 -0400.
<Morbus> Druplicon: remind me by next week that this feature debuted!
<Druplicon> Morbus: I'll remind you about that on Wed, 19 May 2010 13:34:41 -0400.
Submitted by Morbus Iff on Tue, 2010-05-11 13:06
I've added some new code to my Drupal IRC bot.module and Druplicon, the official Drupal IRC bot, is now running with these features. First up is feed aggregation: bot.module now integrates with aggregator.module to provide IRC announcements of new feed items. Feeds can be configured per channel or the items can be sent to multiple channels at once. If you run a channel on Freenode that currently has Druplicon and you'd like it to announce relevant news as it happens, don't hesitate to let me know.
A new bot_potpourri.module has been added, and its first feature is timezone display and conversion. From the integrated help: Display timezones with "BOTNAME: timezone BST". Convert timezones with "tz 10AM MST to EST" or "tz 14:27 UTC in Europe/London". Timestamps are allowed if combined and with no spaces: "tz 2010-10-23T10:00 EST to UTC". All returned dates are DST-aware.
Some examples:
<Morbus> find out what time it is somewhere:
<Morbus> Druplicon: tz EST
<Druplicon> 2010-05-11 12:05 EDT.
<Morbus> or convert from one timezone to another:
<Morbus> timezone 14:27 EST to Europe/London
<Druplicon> 2010-05-11 19:27 BST.
<Morbus> tz 10 A.M. America/New_York to MST
<Druplicon> 2010-05-11 08:00 MDT.
<Morbus> tz 6 pm EST in EST
<Druplicon> 2010-05-11 18:00 EDT.
<Morbus> or dates in the future. note that DST is always considered:
<Morbus> tz 2010-10-23T10:00 EST in UTC
<Druplicon> 2010-10-23 14:00 UTC.
<Morbus> timezone 2010-01-23T10:00 EST in UTC
<Druplicon> 2010-01-23 15:00 UTC.
I hope to squeeze in some more features later this week too.
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